Conceptualisation and Exposition: A Theory of Character Construction 2019005924, 2019006637, 9780367183165, 9780429060762

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Conceptualisation and Exposition

While the concept of the fictional character has been widely discussed at an interdisciplinary level, a foundational theory of character creation is yet to follow. As a result, creative writing students and beginner writers refer to post-construction analysis as well as the step-by-step advice often suggested by popular writing manuals. Aiming to fill this gap and at the same time reconcile approaches in writing and criticism, this book proposes a theory of character creation based on the in-depth analysis of the concept as well as its place within the narrative. The approach suggested herein consists of two interrelated stages: conceptualisation and exposition. Conceptualisation entails the in-depth understanding of what constitutes the fictional character as well as the dynamics of its correlation with the reader; the author; and its real counterpart, the human person; Exposition refers to the conveyance of such understanding on paper. Viewing creative writing as an art and a craft, the author builds her theory on the notion that comprehension of the world and the concept of character itself is an essential prerequisite in order to construct consistent and believable fictional persons. Varotsi also introduces her four stages of creation – Observation, Perception, Empathy and Imagination – to inspire a method of work according to which personal craftsmanship and artistry can be successfully combined with pedagogic technique. Lina Varotsi is an independent academic Researcher, novelist and creative writing instructor. She holds a PhD in English & Creative Writing, a Master’s Degree in Practical Filmmaking and a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism & Mass Media Communications. Her areas of interest lie within creative writing and literary theory; screenwriting and film narratology; creative processes; and the implementation of creative writing in education, cultural studies, socio-linguistics and theory of mind. She is also the Editorial Director of Poua Publications, specialising in parenting education and children’s fiction.Her debut novel is due to be published in late 2019.

Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory

The Individual and the Authority Figure in Egyptian Prose Literature Yona Sheffer The Pictorial Third An Essay into Intermedial Criticism Liliane Louvel Making and Seeing Modern Texts Jonathan Locke Hart Cultural Evolution and its Discontents Robert Watson California and the Melancholic American Identity in Joan Didion’s Novels Exiled from Eden Katarzyna Nowak-McNeice Narrative Reliability, Racial Conflicts and Ideology in the Modern Novel Marta Puxan-Oliva Agamben’s Political Ontology of Nudity in Literature and Art Frances Restuccia Conceptualisation and Exposition A Theory of Character Construction Lina Varotsi

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.­routledge. com/literature/series/LITCRITANDCULT

Conceptualisation and Exposition A Theory of Character Construction

Lina Varotsi

First published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Lina Varotsi to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Varotsi, Lina, author. Title: Conceptualisation and exposition : a theory of character construction / Lina Varotsi. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2019. | Series: Literary criticism and cultural theory | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2019005924 (print) | LCCN 2019006637 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Fiction—Technique. | Fiction—Authorship. | Characters and characteristics in literature. | Fictitious characters. Classification: LCC PN3383.C4 (ebook) | LCC PN3383.C4 V37 2019 (print) | DDC 808.3/97—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019005924 ISBN: 978-0-367-18316-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-06076-2 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

To Xanel, Who came to change everything, and made me a better everything. Words will never be enough to express how much I love you.

Contents

Acknowledgements

xi

1 Introduction

1

2 The Fictional Character 2.1  Notions of Personality and Personhood 6 2.2  The Fictional Character: Concept and Function 10 2.3  The Character Schema 12 2.3.1  The Uniqueness of Character 12 2.3.2  Character as a Psychological Construct 14 2.4  Fictional Identities 15 2.4.1  Proper Name 16 2.4.2  Physical Embodiment 19 2.4.3  Past Identities 26 2.4.4  Society and Environment 28 2.4.5  The Inner Self 35 2.5  Summary of Conclusions 39

6

3 Character and the Reader 3.1  The Reader of Fiction 40 3.1.1  The Reader as an Active Participant 40 3.1.2  The Author–Reader Contract 41 3.1.3  Reader: Constant, Implied, Universal 42 3.2  Why Do Readers Read? 45 3.3  Reader and Emotional Response 49 3.3.1  Identification and Empathy 51 3.3.2  Emotional Response and Character Complexity 55 3.4  Summary of Conclusions 58

40

viii Contents 59 4 A Reference for Fiction 4.1  Is Fiction Inspired by Reality? 59 4.1.1  Reality and Fiction: Possible Correlations 59 4.1.2  Fiction, Reality and History 60 4.1.3  Character as the Narrator of History 62 4.2  A Dissension of Terminology 63 4.3  Truth in Fiction: The Significance of Consistency 66 4.3.1  Consistency and Suspension of Disbelief 67 4.3.2  An Account of Inconsistency 69 4.3.3  Consistency of Agent: The Lifelike Character Defined 69 4.3.4  Inconsistency of Agent 73 4.3.5  The Stereotype Explained 74 4.4  Summary of Conclusions 77 5 Character and the Author 78 5.1  The Author of Fiction 78 5.1.1  The Author Defined: Establishing an Identity 78 5.1.2  Is the Author Dead? 79 5.1.3  The Authorial Purpose 82 5.1.4  The Artist and the Craftsman 85 5.2  The Muse at Works 88 5.2.1  Drawing from Experience 88 5.2.2  The Authorial Experience 90 5.2.3  Apprehension via the Senses 91 5.2.4  Practical Research 94 5.3  The Author and her Characters 95 5.3.1  The Conception and Birth of the Fictional Character 96 5.3.2  The Character Delusion: Dispelling the Myth 97 5.3.3  T he Absorption of Artifice: The Illusion of Free Will 100 5.4  Authors and Narrators 105 5.4.1  Point of View 107 5.4.1A  Omniscient 108 5.4.1B  First Person 113 5.4.1C  Third Person 118

5.4.2  The Choice of Point of View 121 5.4.3  On Reliable and Unreliable Narrators 122 5.5  Summary of Conclusions 125 6 Character and the Narrative 6.1  Character and Characterisation: Construction versus Exposition 127 6.2  A Classification of Characters 129

126

Contents  ix 6.3  Self-Creation of Character: The Concept of Character Arc 136 6.4  Character Expositors 142 6.5  Character Relations 149 6.6  External Stimuli 152 6.7  Summary of Conclusions 154 7 Afterword Appendix Bibliography Index

155 159 163 171

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I feel the need to express my gratitude to my parents, Apostolos and Eleni, for their support and encouragement in my research endeavours. Without it, this wouldn’t have been possible. Also to my wonderful husband, George, for our infinite exchange of ideas and for re-igniting my faith in myself and my creativity. Finally, thank you to my editors, Michelle Salyga and Bryony Reece, who saw the potential in this work and guided me with patience and utmost professionalism.

1 Introduction

The idea for this book was born out of a creative need to understand everything I could about the reason behind my love for writing and reading. Fascinated by the complexity of human nature and its endless possibilities, I was always attracted to anthropocentric narratives. Yet I had never before pinpointed the instigating forces behind this attraction, which, alongside inspiration, imprinted memories and fanciful imagination, shaped my daydreams into events which were to become stories, ultimately in the form of fictional texts. Until one day I decided to transform my endeavours into acquirable knowledge: I wanted to know what the fictional character is all about. During my research, I developed a strong interest in creative writing theory and those dynamics that drive inspiration and the creative process. Having read across genres, narrative modes and languages, I embarked on a long exploration searching through literary criticism texts, popular writing manuals, philosophical and psychological analyses on personhood, and cultural conceptions of identity. The impressions and discoveries of this journey were then collaged together and mapped into the path revealed in the book that you are now holding. What is proposed here is an applicable model of thought, focussing on the fictional character as a notion, textual element and function within the narrative. Graeme Harper’s (2010, p. 63) following quote fully encapsulates my syllogisms: We can also consider the systemic nature of Creative Writing in terms of choice — in this sense, using the idea of system to refer to both conscious and unconscious choices that can be made by creative writers in Creative Writing…. So the systemic entails competing writerly choices and the question of how, and when, and in what form those choices are made, with what results…. This may also relate to how a creative writer establishes, within the context of their Creative Writing, a paradigm of behaviour and results that equate with their own definitions, and assessments, of utility, achievement, aesthetic worth, progression, communication and, indeed, art. (Harper, 2010, pp. 89–90)

2 Introduction Drawing from the study of creative processes, from problem-solving to stage theories (Gilhooly, 1996; Gregg and Steinberg, 1980; Smith, 1982), I came to view character construction as an act of two stages: Conceptualisation and Exposition. Conceptualisation could be viewed as the ‘preparation’ phase but not in the sense of a rigid accumulation of material. It can be seen as the ‘prewriting’ stage, which Smith (1982) defines as: [T]he “incubation” of ideas that may constitute the basis of a text can occur when we do not actually have a pen in hand—­minutes—or ­ aper…. hours, even days or weeks before we actually put words on p Creativity is the business of the brain it is the manner in which the brain copes with the world—and … the way it learns about the world…. [T]he brain is constantly creating possibilities for the future. Its normal mode of operation is to generate alternative worlds in order to anticipate the world which will actually come to be…. [H]ypothetical thought is the basis of our perception of the world. (Smith, 1982, pp. 122–123) Applying Smith’s view on this study, we can think of Conceptualisation as precisely this stage of incubation, when fragments of our understanding of the human personality and nature come together to form and crystallise into new fictional figures, which will ultimately make it into a finished text. The products of this creative process will trigger events and receive their impacts in the narrative worlds we build. My approach is also systemic in that, as Graeme Harper (2010, p. 89) illustrates, “one element interacts with another.” The main proposition on which this entire work is founded is that above and beyond all methods, strategies and techniques, the key to fictional character construction lies within the understanding of its nature as well as its function in the narrative. In Conceptualisation thus, I’m examining where character stands in relation to the reader, the real human person, and the novelist. My aim is to explore motivations behind reading choices, notions of realism and its correlations to believability, and the relationship between creator and creation respectively. Hence, Conceptualisation is all about understanding and preparing. Exposition, in its turn, refers to the conveyance of this comprehension and preparation on paper. Once the character has turned from a blurry notion into a delineated figure, the author is called to reveal her through the text by employing a range of creative and technical skills. This is an inexhaustible topic, and there are already innumerable works on the market discussing characterisation; in fact, this section itself could very well be expanded into a book of its own. For the specific purposes of this book and reasons of economy, I will focus on outlining the primary character expositors – or else, certain devices through which

Introduction  3 characterisation can be conveyed – through an explanatory prism rather than the recommendation of particular strategies. I will also examine the interactions between character and the rest of the narrative elements, such as external stimuli or character relationships, to demonstrate how the fictional character functions within the story-world. My approach, which considers writing as both an art and a craft, combines synthesis with critical analysis. More specifically, the theory proposed herein will reflect my own working patterns, but its applicability will also be tested against existing works through character and narrative analysis. By dissecting those texts my aim is not quite to guess their creators’ techniques and creative decisions but is rather an attempt to apply my own theory onto them. In essence, I endorse Harper’s (2010) following clarification: [I]f the creative writer who is also a reader applies the empirical information they have accumulated, more or less over time, from experience and active observation, from the doing of Creative Writing as well as the reading of final works of literature … to final works produced by Creative Writing then post-event knowledge is matched by the knowledge of the event (acts and actions) of Creative Writing. (Harper, 2010, p. 21) Most importantly, I aim to establish a comprehensible approach to character creation for the apprentice writer and teacher of creative writing alike, which will enhance individual creativity without imposing technical restrictions to it. The main literary titles that I have decided to use are Sarah Waters’s (2002) Fingersmith, J.M. Coetzee’s (1999) Disgrace, Rick Moody’s (1998) The Ice Storm, Lisa McInerney’s (2016) The Glorious Heresies and Alain de Botton’s (2017) The Course of Love. This isn’t an exhaustive list, and many other titles will be referenced throughout my study. A plethora of reasons lie behind my choices. First of all, they are all contemporary novels of the last thirty years, offering convincing human portraits through a variety of perspectives and socio-political situations. Moreover, they all present a diversity of narration modes, each establishing different kinds of reader alignment with its characters. Disgrace and The Glorious Heresies contain excellent examples of the anti-hero at work. In The Ice Storm, Fingersmith, The Course of Love and The Glorious Heresies we come across complicated character relations and watch them unravel or become even more entangled. Disgrace and Fingersmith proffer a unique opportunity to examine the relation between spatio-temporal setting and character. And they are all prime examples of how action derives from character, and vice versa. I would strongly recommend that readers familiarise themselves with some or all of the titles prior to reading this book, although I hope that

4 Introduction the use of excerpts make the reason of their selection explicit and my points clear. Above all, a writer is or should be primarily a reader, and my best tip to any apprentice writer is to study the works they love and the writers they admire. To support my theorising, I have used a range of academic works from different disciplines, primarily creative writing, literary criticism, philosophy, psychology and cultural studies. I have also included commentaries by contemporary as well as Victorian novelists that reflect personal views and approaches to writing. My choice to embed Constantin Stanislavski’s (Moore, 1984) method is founded on the compatibility of his philosophy with the core stance of this book: the artist touching the inner life of her creation. Gordon Allport’s (1937) personality theory has helped draw valid comparisons between the human and the character as organisational systems in constant flux. And the Kantian approach to creativity, as expanded by Mark Johnson (1987), has served as a platform for some of my propositions on experience and imagination. Insofar as structure is concerned, this study can be viewed as a conceptual edifice created in such a way that the conclusions of each level serve as stairways to the next one up, with the epitome – the discussion of character within the story-world – as the mezzanine. In order to reach and enjoy its panoramic views, the writer needs to pass through every floor (lifts are unfortunately out of order). The building’s foundations will be laid upon a discussion of the character concept itself so that further discourse on its correlations with the world, the human being and the author make sense. As such, the first chapter attempts a definition by focussing on notions of personhood and identity in order to sketch a framework around character as a textual device but also the bearer and begetter of action. The second chapter will discuss the reader both as an abstract notion and a real entity. The emphasis here will be placed on her active participation in the deconstruction of the text as well as those universal themes that can make any story accessible and comprehensible to her, irrespective of her socio-cultural situation. By examining the relationship between character and reader I wish to get to the bottom of what attracts people to anthropocentric narratives and highlight the importance of successfully capturing the essence of human nature in our fictional creation. Entering the middle of the building, the third chapter juxtaposes the fictional with the real world, discussing concepts such as reality and history, and their relation to literature. One of the greatest and longest-­ lasting debates among literary scholars is whether fiction is an imitation of reality. Understanding key concepts of this debate and establishing a referential relationship between creation and prototype will help the author decide which elements can render her fictional world plausible,

Introduction  5 regardless of her chosen genre, as well as how she can ensure suspension of disbelief without reproducing a sterile image of the familiar. One floor up, we find ourselves standing against our characters – or perhaps closer to them. Is the relationship between the author and her characters one of a puppeteer and her puppets? Are our characters confined by the drawn limitations of a pre-decided fate, or can they (appear to) walk their own path? Are we committing a scholarly faux pas by speculating on how many children Lady Macbeth may have had? Answering those questions from the perspective of the writer can unlock the final door to the mezzanine as it is equivalent to solving the ever-existing chicken-egg dilemma: who comes first, character or plot? Disengaging the new writer from this theoretical dilemma, this book will argue that one derives from the other, emphasising the principle that if the character is adequately and convincingly drawn, there is no real issue of attributing prioritisation. This will become more evident in my final chapter, where character is examined through its dynamic relationships to the rest of the narrative’s elements. Finally, we’ve made it to the top. If during our ascending we have been harvesting a wealth of realisations and creative insights, how, then, can we share them with our readers? This chapter is all about economy and consistency of information, of relevance and synchronicity, and of pouring our creativity into the pages. Put differently, this chapter is designed to help the writer decide how she can use the information she already holds about her creation by understanding how the narrative works as a system. This chapter alone could be expanded into an altogether new book. For the purposes of this particular study though, I can only offer an outline of how narration and its textual elements work in synergy. Perhaps we can meet again in a different book to pursue our goals of narrative architecture further!

2 The Fictional Character

2.1  Notions of Personality and Personhood As I will be arguing later, fiction can be correlated to reality to a certain, albeit indeterminable, degree. For now, it will suffice to suggest that the fictional character is inspired by the many facets of her real-life counterpart. The question of what constitutes a person has always been widely discussed within scholarly circles but a respectively detailed analysis lies outside the scope of this book. What I will try to do instead is to notionally outline the parameters of personhood and personality so that it serves as the foundation upon which the fictional character construct can be built. Charles Taylor (1985) writes: Philosophers consider that to be a person in the full sense you have to be an agent with a sense of yourself as an agent, a being which can thus make plans for your life, one who also holds values in virtue, of which different such plans seem better or worse, and who is capable of choosing between them. (Taylor, 1985, p. 257) For Vivien Burr (2002, pp. 7–8), the person is the “[F]ree-thinking moral agent with its own unique thoughts, beliefs and values, an individual contained within its own psychological space, separated from material reality and from other individuals.” Jonathan Glover (1988, p. 88) considers that “[A] person is someone who has the self-conscious thoughts expressed by ‘I.’” And for Gordon W. Allport (1937, p. 1), “The outstanding characteristic of man is his individuality. He is a unique creation of the forces of nature. Separated spatially from all other men he behaves throughout his own particular span of life in his own distinctive fashion.” We can thus agree that the most prominent characteristic of a ‘person’ is her individuality, or else, what distinguishes her from the rest of her species through a number of criteria. In his work, Engaging Characters, Murray Smith’s introduces (1995) the ‘person schema,’ constituted by the following set of capacities: an actual body; a perceptual ability and

The Fictional Character  7 the awareness of oneself; intentional states; emotions; the ability of verbal communication; the ability to act and as such evaluate; and the existence of traits and attributes within. Similarly, Daniel Dennett (1976, pp. 177–194) introduced six conditions of personhood: rationality, intentionality, reception of attitudes/stances and reciprocation thereof, verbal communication and self-consciousness. Applying the aforementioned categorisations to my own analysis, I propose that the ‘character schema’ may entail the following: • • • • • •

The textual representation of a physical embodiment. A proper name as a point of (self-) reference and (self-) determination. The capacity to perceive and as such infer/reason. Intentional states. The ability to self-reflect, evaluate and as such react. The capacity to communicate.

This way such criteria are interconnected and manifest through the text to form the textual ensemble that can be called ‘the fictional personality.’ In her work, Concepts of Person, Catherine McCall (1990, p. 7) proposes a distinction between the terms ‘person,’ ‘self’ and ‘human being’ as bearing different yet interrelated meanings for the individual. According to her analysis (1990), ‘person’ refers to the specific way an individual is understood by her social surroundings, and can therefore only be used in a social context; on the other hand, ‘self’ pertains to the awareness of our own existence, our intentional states and our actions; finally, ‘human being’ refers to the individual’s existence as a biological entity of a certain species. Adjusting McCall’s analysis to mine, I suggest that we speak of the ‘fictional person’ as perceived by the novelist, the reader and the other characters; the ‘fictional self’ corresponds to the illusion of a semiotic existence with a virtual consciousness; and ‘human being’ correlates to the fictional agent, as the entity populating the narrative world. All three notions are interrelated and can only be discussed within the realm of the personhood system. The following quote by Martin Price (1983) illustrates this further: If we are asked to recount our intellectual history, many episodes will remind us that our intellectual life is not autonomous, but affected, even shaped, by other elements of the self…. The self is rarely a simple, massive conception. More often we are drawing out of it those aspects that meet attention because they serve some immediate purpose. The purpose is usually a social one, set by our regulations with others, directed by their claims or demands upon us. (Price, 1983, p. 39)

8  The Fictional Character A person’s attempt at self-definition cannot occur outside the awareness of her individual and social existence, which motivates and shapes her sense of identity. Such self-awareness is a prerequisite of the personhood condition (Taylor, 1985, p. 265). Its products, however, can only be determined by an understanding of the governing principles within such existence, sense of belonging and perception of environment. The human personality can be a coherent conglomeration of variables, some of which can be affected by the stimuli sent by our social environment. Equally, the fictional personality is both constant and subject to unexpected reformations (temporary or prospectively permanent) instigated by the narrative’s events. The existence of reasons and the recognition of the triggers behind those reformations essentially help us maintain the perception of personality as a coherent whole. Burr (2002) explains accordingly: [W]e do not normally feel ourselves to be a random mixture of incompatible or inconsistent attributes. We certainly recognise inner conflicts, and can feel pulled in different directions by different sides of our nature, but this is experienced as a problem and one that needs resolving back into coherence. We see our actions as the outcome of rational deliberation and decision-making – at least we feel that it ought to be so. (Burr, 2002, p. 4) Coherence in the creation of the fictional person will be further explored in Chapter 4, but for now, it will suffice to mention that character actions and choices should not bewilder the reader, even if they deviate from the portrait the author has painted until this or that point in the novel. This does not mean that the character must be constantly predictable, but rather that any change should be either consequential or deducible, even though the author has chosen not to emphasise its cues. Since the human personality is a constantly evolving system, causally triggered shifts may lead to the formation of new patterns and even attributes. In that respect, acting out of character does not indicate a dysfunctional personality, but simply unpredictable behaviour. As Kupperman (1991) highlights: [S]omeone’s character may be the engraving of ways of thinking and acting which have become predictable but which do not preclude a person’s acting out of character. If someone acts out of character, there still may be a cause of this behaviour within her or his character, that is, the character may be such that certain forms of behaviour that are uncharacteristic of that person become less unlikely in circumstances X, Y, and Z. (Kupperman, 1991, p. 4)

The Fictional Character  9 I therefore suggest that when a fictional character is acting ‘out of character’ her behaviour can be explained by internal motivations or the effect of external events. It is precisely this deviation from the utterly predictable that gives the character lifelike dimensions; or, as Chatman (1972, p. 63) phrased it, “some respite from the relentless needs of the plot.” We will be looking at character consistency later, but here are a few indicative examples. In The Ice Storm (1994), Elena Hood decides to participate in the key-party and leave with Jim Williams, while her husband is passed out in the bathroom. Thus far, she has been portrayed as an introverted, conservative person, trapped in herself and her marriage. Yet it is her past, her husband’s infidelity and his drunken shame when he competes for Janey Williams at the party that ultimately drive her to act out of character. Once the deed is done, she reverts to her expected norms and modus operandi: They each fell into their own remorse. They were just neighbours again, if they had ever been anything else. Elena felt cheap and isolated. It had been as romantic as a pap smear or a home breast exam. She would rather wait in a gas-rationing line; she would rather watch war footage; she would rather – she was shocked to learn – clean up after the drunken Benjamin Hood. She let herself do certain things because of fashion, though she didn’t think of herself as fashionable in any way, and fashion brought the unexpected along with it. (Moody, 1998, pp. 177–178) In Disgrace (Coetzee, 1999, p. 232), David Lurie, an arrogant and proud scholar, kneels in front of Melanie Isaac’s family in pursuit of forgiveness: “With careful ceremony he gets to his knees and touches his forehead to the floor. Is that enough? he thinks. Will that do? If not, what more?” This is indeed an out-of-character moment, and Lurie is aware of this spontaneous decision as he is in the act of materialising it. The setting, the ambience of the house, his ambiguous emotions towards the Isaacs and all things past trigger it without rendering the character unconvincingly surprising. It is precisely because our personalities are not carved in stone that such transformations manifest. Traits are not mutually exclusive either, even though cultural and religious norms often dictate polar distinctions such as good versus bad, virtuous versus sinner, etc. This is where the complexity of our nature manifests, inspiring the most complicated and genuine fictional character portraits. Take David Lurie, for instance. His self-perception as a scholar and a ‘servant of eros’ obscure in his mind the implications of his imposition on Melanie Isaacs, yet the academic committee treat the events from a very different angle: that of sexual harassment. However, Lurie cannot see himself as a rapist or as someone

10  The Fictional Character who has taken advantage of his authority and position. When his daughter is raped in her own home, his views on rape and gender violence manifest through the emotions of anger, despair and need for justice. Equally, In The Glorious Heresies (McInerney, 2016) Ryan Cusack is a drug dealer, no doubt a criminal through the prism of certain socio-­ cultural morals. Yet the unforced care and empathy he demonstrates for Georgie, and the fact that he will try to save her life at the end depict him as a normal (textual) human being with their inner struggles, desires and wishes. As such, coherence of personality is not about an array of traits linearly demonstrable in the course of a narrative. Rather, any diversity of characteristics and internal contradictions should be logically explicable in the personality schema.

2.2  The Fictional Character: Concept and Function In The Art of the Novel (1988), Kundera writes that All novels, of every age, are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: What is the self? How can the self be grasped? It is one of those fundamental questions on which the novel, as novel, is based. (Kundera, 1988, p. 23) The metaphysical implications of this question of course can be innumerable. Theories of personhood and the self are inexhaustible, and responses are further complicated by principles of science, theology, various schools of psychology and so on. Kundera himself (1988, pp. 33–34) resists the idea that the fictional character is a simulation of a human being, and instead speaks of “an experimental self with an existential problem” – referring thus to the type of narrative Harvey (1965, p. 134) described as “the subjective novel.” I will begin by defining the fictional character as: The textual object that encompasses the functions of initiating and reciprocating action within the narrative, thus weaving the thread of the plot. As I will discuss later, the debate between supporters of the primacy of action upon character and vice versa, is one of the most notable in the history of literary criticism (Chatman, 1978; Rimmon-Kenan, 1983). Depending on the author’s purposes, the character will either assume the uncomplicated role of the action-carrier or will beget and receive it as per her own constructed personality; after all, there exist the so-called ‘character-driven’ as well as the ‘plot-driven’ stories; or, described by

The Fictional Character  11 Rimmon-Kenan (1983, pp. 35–36), the ‘psychological’ narratives and the ‘a-psychological’ ones. I disagree with the purpose of this dissension altogether and wish to argue that it poses a false dilemma. Character and action co-exist in synergy within the narrative system and the focus should be placed on the dynamics of this interchange. Put differently, the novel is a dynamic organisation within which character and plot interact by sending and receiving stimuli. It is precisely this interchange that drives the narrative to unfold and extend in its crafted path. As Chatman (1978) writes, [T]he question of “priority” or “dominance” is not meaningful. Stories only exist where both events and existents occur. There cannot be events without existents. And though it is true that a text can have existents without events (a portrait, a descriptive essay), no one would think of calling it a narrative. (Chatman, 1978, p. 113) Indeed, the production of novels does not come out of a blueprint. The narrative is a novelist’s creative imprint on the page, and as such her cognitive hierarchies as well as her perception of the world and its functions are reflected in the text. The following definition of the novel by Kundera (1988, p. 142) is quite illustrative of this point: “[The novel is] the great prose form in which an author thoroughly explores, by means of experimental selves (characters), some great themes of existence.” And yet Kundera (ibid, p. 23) also believes that “It is through the action that man steps forth from the repetitive universe of the everyday where each person resembles every other person; it is through action that he distinguishes himself from others and becomes an individual.” Character is the instigating force behind an action, and our actions are indicative and revealing of our behaviours, which is precisely why the two cannot be seen as conflicting elements with one overpowering the other in the text. As such, if we put a premium on action over character, our narrative would highly likely lack in believability and coherence. In his work Character, Joel Kupperman (1991) links character to behaviour and defines the notion of having ‘no character’ as follows: [T]o have a character is to act in such a way that the person one is plays a major role in any explanation of one’s behavior. To have no character is to act in such a way that one’s behaviour might be viewed as (at least approximately) the product of forces acting on one. (Kupperman, 1991, p. 7) Kupperman’s theorising may serve as a solid platform for the discussion of the fictional character’s principal qualities. Her personality co-exists within the textual sphere of created, received and reciprocated events. The conditional sets of personhood manifest in action triggered by the

12  The Fictional Character character’s actions and reactions in external stimuli, that is, narrative elements. A character that appears to float through, rather than stir, the story’s events is lifeless. Kundera (1988, p. 115) writes that “Every situation is of man’s making and can only contain what man contains; thus one can imagine that the situation (and all its metaphysical implications) has existed as a human possibility for a long time.” I shall now investigate how those two predominant narrative elements emerge from one another.

2.3  The Character Schema Having discussed notions of personhood and identity, I will now explore their applicability to the fictional character construct. 2.3.1  The Uniqueness of Character As I plan to argue, a character is the textual construct of a hypothetical human being. The nature of the correspondence between character and the real person is defined as much by the similarities between the two poles, as by their fundamental differences. Characters may also assume the form of personified animals or objects. Smith (1995, p. 24) defines personification as, “[T]he use of the human as a model for understanding non-human forces and entities.” The common denominator of all such character manifestations is that they are designed as separate entities, recognisable in their isolated singularity. I therefore wish to discuss what individuality signifies in this case. Harvey (1965) remarked: When, in real life, we try to describe a person’s character we generally speak in terms of a discrete identity. We think of it as something unique and separable from all other identities. We do this, of course, because the most intimate sense of character we can possibly have— our knowledge of self—is of this kind…. From this we extrapolate a similar sense of the characters of others; they may be private and unknowable but they are like us at least in this respect. (Harvey, 1965, p. 31) And Chatman (1972) comments: The ‘meaning’ of a character I take to be the set of personal traits that delineate him, set him apart from the others, make him memorable to us. Even in [a] highly stylized novel, one may find character traits which are ‘irrelevantly’ idiosyncratic, bits of behavior that cannot be accounted for by the character’s function or role in the strict sense. (Chatman, 1972, p. 63)

The Fictional Character  13 Indeed, what renders a person unique is her diversity, all those elements that differentiate her in one’s memory. Much like in a human being, internal consistencies shift and new elements manifest within the dynamic organisation of the fictional personality, without being strictly related to the linearity of the plot. Kundera (1988) regards individuality to be the ultimate manifestation of subjectivity, and as he writes, [I]t is precisely in losing the certainty of truth and the unanimous agreement of others that man becomes an individual. The novel is the imaginary paradise of individuals. It is the territory where no one possesses the truth … but where everywhere one has the right to be understood. (Kundera, 1988, p. 159) And in such individuation of the self lies the author’s ability to create believable fictional persons, as it requires a clear understanding of oneself, as well as of others. Human relationships are built on the basis of such similarity and dissimilarity. The individuality of character stands on the other pole of the axis from the dimensionless stereotype, the one that is devoid of any special attributes. I don’t imply that a character should appear unconvincing, or even constantly deviate from the patterns of her socio-cultural norms. This would depend on the genre and type of story narrated. The relation of the individual to her socio-cultural stereotype is pivotal. She is defined by the degree she conforms to or deviates from it. Again, consistency enters the equation, relying precisely on the qualities rotating around the axis of the norm, the expected. Harvey (1965) elaborated as follows: Beneath the superstructure of the individualized character, we may sense those depths in which identity is submerged and united within a greater whole. And with the very greatest novels one feels that the individual character is thereby immeasurably enriched, that he is not obliterated, or dehumanized into allegory or symbol, but filled with an inexhaustible reservoir of meaning so that he becomes, as it were, a shaft of light defining the greater darkness which surrounds him. (Harvey, 1965, p. 129) At the same time, it is the summary of such individuation that forms societal norms. The distinguishing characteristics that each person carries shape the social construct and form the spatio-temporal diversity of status quo around the globe. The extent to which each person is able to reason, self-reflect, communicate, as well as the triggers and products of her intentions, play a role in the formation of her surrounding reality. Similarly, the individual amalgamation of characteristics that constitute the character’s individuality are synthesised to form the fictional narrative. This is a bidirectional process, the stereotype affecting individuality, which, in its turn, shapes the norm.

14  The Fictional Character 2.3.2  Character as a Psychological Construct I have already mentioned the debate between structuralists and realists, as well as that I find it disorientating for the creative writer. A character is a textual construct, based on the internal synthesis of a human being. She does not have a psychological existence, in the same way she can’t possess a real body, or be part of a real setting. All her dimensions manifest behind textual cues, within the sphere of the author and reader’s cognition and imagination. A character’s actions matter only if the reader is able to interpret them, and such interpretation is based on the inherent understanding of the human person regardless of the concept’s extent of deviation. Internal consistency ensures the external congruity of the narrative. At the same time, a character cannot be viewed as an exact imprint of a real person. Real people can appear to be random, chaotic and unpredictable, since others do not have access to their mental states and thoughts. An imitation of this kind presupposes a certain understanding by the novelist, whose purpose is not to convince the reader what her character is but rather what it could be under various circumstances. Attempting to define the character concept, writers have initiated trait theories (Chatman, 1978), hierarchical structures (Ferrara, 1974; Williams, 1993), conceptual components (Mills, 2006; Stein, 1995) and dimensions (Egri, 1960; Seger, 1990), and so on. At the same time, we often come across collections of personality quizzes (Maisel and Maisel, 2006), checklists and exercises (Viders et al., 2006), categorisations of traits (Edelstein, 2006) and psychological typologies (Indick, 2004). One of the most notable theories of character structure is Chatman’s (1978), which recognised the complexity of the modern character and examined her as an open construct in his notable Paradigm of Traits (1978, p. 130): C = Tn where character (C) equals an infinite amount of traits (T). Rimmon-Kenan (1983, p. 37) proposes that character can be viewed as “[A] tree-like hierarchical structure in which elements are assembled in categories of increasing integrative power.” Garvey (1978) distinguishes between “structural or non-structural attributes.” Ferrara (1974) initiates a model of the surface, middle and deeper structure of character. Egri (1960) presented his theory of the three dimensions: the physiological, the sociological and the psychological. Stein (1995, pp. 62–63) proposes that the ‘extraordinary’ character can be composed by the criteria of Personality, Disposition, Temperament, Individuality and Eccentricity. He (ibid, pp. 74–81) speaks of ‘character markers’ as tools of successful character exposition. And Mills (1996, 2006) suggests that

The Fictional Character  15 a character becomes recognisable in her uniqueness by means of ‘character rhythm’. While typologies aim to organise and clarify, they also obliterate individual fragments, those little, albeit significant, elements that constitute one’s uniqueness. The creation of a fictional person shouldn’t be viewed simply as a matter of additions or subtractions of traits. Taking it one step further, inferencing is very likely to beget ‘pseudo-traits’ (Allport, 1937, p. 325) rather than actual ones – and by actual, I refer to the ones originally attributed by the intention of the author. In any case, traits do not dictate behaviour themselves, together or in isolation (Allport, 1937). Idiosyncratic manifestations occur by shifts in a personality’s dynamic organisation. A predominant trait may be led to extinction; a trait the writer wasn’t even aware of may emerge as a response to an external stimulus. Narrative components exist in constant multidirectional interaction (Varotsis, 2013), continuously affecting one another until conclusions emerge consequentially. And so, hierarchies change, new paradigms emerge and the story often results in a total recreation of the self. Moreover, as Allport (1937, p. 297) explained, “[N]o two persons ever have precisely the same trait. Though each of two men may be aggressive (or aesthetic) the style and range of the aggression (or aestheticism) in each case is noticeably different.” I contend that the author’s primary aim is consistency achieved by means of perceptual creativity, in order to depict the complexity of life into her pages. As Smith (1995) writes, [W]e would not find ourselves attracted to (and so could not become allied with) an inert bundle of traits. We perceive and conceive of characters as integral, discreet textual constructs. Just as persons in the real world may be complex or entertain conflicting beliefs, so may characters; but as with persons, such internal contradictions are perceived against the ground of (at least) bodily discreteness and continuity. (Smith, 1995, p. 82) I will now try to pinpoint what the concept of a unique fictional identity entails.

2.4  Fictional Identities Mike Storry and Peter Childs (1997) note that [I]dentity is perhaps two things: who people take themselves to be, and who others take them to be…. At one end of the scale, identity is partly prescribed by what the state considers to be important about people: their physical characteristics, place of birth and area of employment…. At the other end of the scale, many people

16  The Fictional Character might consider the most important aspects of their identity to be their emotional life, their aspirations, their sporting or intellectual achievements and so on. So we are also inevitably left with versions of identity, rather than a single definitive identity for each individual. (Storry and Childs, 1997, pp. 6–7) Based on this, as well as the six deduced conditions of personhood, I will attempt to define the identity of the fictional character. 2.4.1  Proper Name “What is a name?” asks Brayfield (1996, p. 175) and proceeds to answer: “Two words which express a whole human identity.” While not a natural determinant itself, the proper name is an integral part of a person’s self-definition, as well as the recognition of her distinct existence. For Barthes (1990), the proper name is the referential point of the summary of textual symbols that constitute the concept of character. As a structuralist, Barthes claimed that the inevitable uniqueness the proper name signifies may be falsely interpreted to imply a non-existent individuality. I disagree with this argument, as a name itself is a referential point of identification much like any other characterising element, whether we talk of a fictional construct or a real person. For many novelists, deciding on a character’s name involves a process of meticulous consideration. This is why some find it hard to change it later (Lodge, 2002). Depending on the type of fiction and the authorial intentions, it may have symbolic function (Mullan, 2006), or simply designate the individuality of each character, and often typify her by indicating her socio-cultural background (Smith, 1995). In her examination of rape depiction in Disgrace (1999), Lucy V. ­Graham (2003, p. 437), proposes that Melanie’s name is a symbolic reference to darkness. Indeed, Lurie (1999, p. 22) spends time contemplating: “Melanie-melody: a meretricious rhyme. Not a good name for her. Shift the accent. Meláni: the dark one.” On the other hand, Lucy’s is associated with the light. Graham (2003, p. 439) expands: Although Shakespeare’s Lucrece names the one who has raped her, her account does not save her from perceiving herself as ‘disgraced’, or from giving herself death. Philomela, in Ovid’s Metamorphosis, is raped and has her tongue cut out to prevent her from naming the crime and the perpetrator. Yet she sews her account into a tapestry, thus making it possible for her sister to discover the rapist’s ­identity … It is no accident that the names of Melanie and Lucy in Disgrace echo those of the two mythological rape victims,

The Fictional Character  17 highlighting Western artistic traditions in which rape has had a fraught relationship with articulation or representation. (Graham, 2003, p. 439) In Fingersmith (2002, p. 517), after Rivers’s murder, it is revealed that his true name had been Frederick Bunt, who wanted to pass as a man of noble heritage. Authors may also choose to assign ordinary names to predominant and exotic ones to minor characters, in order to shift the weight of their importance in the novel, so that they outbalance their significance as per the elements of characterisation at their disposal (Brayfield, 1996). Brayfield even suggests that androgynous names attributed to female characters may aim to elicit sympathy from male readers (1996, p. 175). In Fingersmith (2002, p. 90), Waters makes a minor character stand out simply by giving her a very unique name, cleverly introducing it through Sue: “‘How are you, Mrs Cakebread?’ (That was the cook: that really was her name, it wasn’t a joke, and no-one laughed at it).” At times, a name may serve to characterise others, such as her parents or any other member of the cast that was assigned the role of the name-giver by the author. In Fingersmith (2002), Mrs Sucksby names her daughter Maud, a name obviously suitable for the environment and heritage of Christopher Lilly’s family, where she would be raised. On the contrary, Marianne Lilly chooses to call her own daughter Susan, leaving her in the care of a group residing in the Borough. The usage of names as expository tools is also evident in ways characters refer to each other. As Deborah Tannen (1992, pp. 80–81) explains, “Forms of address are among the most common ways of showing status and affection. Solidarity reigns when two people call each other by their first names. Power reigns when one uses the other’s first name but it’s not reciprocal.” Indeed, nicknames, pet names, informal variations of a first name and prefixes or surnames are all evocative of status, attitudes, predispositions and cultural diversities (Brayfield, 1996; Smith, 1995). Moreover, the choice of addressing another person could be self-definitive rather than characterising. It reveals the addresser’s attitudes and sentiments towards the character in question. For example, in Disgrace (1999, pp. 103–104), Lurie thinks, “I’ll go and help Bev Shaw. Provided that I don’t have to call her Bev. It’s a silly name to go by. It reminds me of cattle.” In The Ice Storm (1994, p. 35), the reader is informed that “Mike and Sandy … called each other Charles (and it was a term of respect) and they never went in the other’s bedroom, but they [sic] loved each other and would die inside when they parted for good.” Sharing a bond, Mike and Wendy also call each other ‘Charles’. When Mike dies, Wendy

18  The Fictional Character thinks of suicide, but in the end decides against it (p. 263): “[S]he was begging Mike to pardon her, telling Mike that she couldn’t do it, that she was gonna have to stick around, Charles. She just couldn’t.” In Fingersmith (2002), upon Sue’s training, Rivers warns her that she should be mindful of the way she addresses him and Maud’s uncle: Ain’t it Susan, sir. You must remember, I shan’t be Gentleman to you at Briar. I shall be Mr Richard Rivers. You must call me sir and you must call Mr Lilly sir and the lady you must call miss or Miss Lilly or Miss Maud, as she directs you. And we shall all call you Susan. (Waters, 2002, p. 39) Mrs Sucksby is referred to and called by only by her last name. Yet, when Rivers is stabbed: I know there was the gleam of something bright, the scuffle of shoes, the swish of taffeta and silk, the rushing of someone’s breath. I think a chair was scraped or knocked upon the floor. I know Mr Ibbs called out. ‘Grace! Grace!’ he called: and even in the middle of all the confusion, I thought it a queer thing to call; until I realised it was Mrs Sucksby’s first name, that we never heard used. (Waters, 2002, p. 508) Margolin (2002, p. 109) views proper names as “[U]nique in being fixed points in a changing world,” considering them rigid ‘tags’ of reference to an object that may otherwise change. In most narratives, Margolin’s suggestion is applicable, since a character’s name is the signifying point that navigates her through the narrative’s changes, ensuring that her existence in the reader’s mind remains intact despite the shifts in her virtual personality. There are times, however, that a name may lose its determinant properties. Name changes can occur in the middle of the narrative. A character may choose to give up her own name in a symbolic act of rejecting her past relations or circumstances. In Disgrace (1999, p. 116), David Lurie is relieved to find his surname misspelled in the newspaper article describing the attack at Lucy’s land: “He is glad that no connection is made between Ms Lourie’s elderly father and David Lurie, disciple of nature poet William Wordsworth and until recently professor at the Cape Technical University.” A character may also be forced to assume a new identity in order to escape danger. At instances, a name given to the reader turns out to correspond to a fake persona, whose dishonesty will be revealed later on. This is exactly the case in Fingersmith (2002); the entire narrative is built around such significance of name interchange, and is evident from

The Fictional Character  19 the first sentence (p. 3): “My name, in those days, was Susan Trinder.” The first change of Sue’s name comes when Richard Rivers, aka Richard Wells, aka Gentleman, aka Frederick Bunt, explains that she needs to find a new one – signifying the adopting of a new persona altogether: ‘[W]e shall all call you Susan.’ He frowned. ‘But not Susan Trinder. That may lead them back to Lant Street if things go wrong. We must find you a better second name—’ ‘Valentine,’ I said, straight off. What can I tell you? I was only seventeen. I had a weakness for hearts. Gentleman heard me, and curled his lip. ‘Perfect,’ he said; ‘—if we were about to put you on the stage’…. ‘A fanciful name might ruin us. This is a life-and-death business. We need a name that will hide you, not bring you to everyone’s notice. We need … an untraceable name, yet one we shall remember…. Let’s make it, Smith. Susan Smith’. (Waters, 2002, p. 39) Sue has no idea how this name will play a significant role in her entrapment. In the madhouse, she tries to convince the doctors that she is not Maud Lilly and not Sue Smith, but Susan Trinder; yet this worsens her situation. In the end, Sue finds out that she is indeed a Lilly, but not Maud; her real name is indeed Susan. Concluding, the proper name acts for the character as a point of reference and (self-) determination, much like it does for a human being. A name that changes amidst the story signifies intentional or consequential shifts in the fictional character’s identity. 2.4.2  Physical Embodiment By ‘physical’ I refer to all those elements that compose a person’s appearance as a referential point, and can be either externally attributed or chosen by the person herself. A person’s appearance is part of their own essence, and changes in it may also mark and alter her nature of being. As Glover (1988) states, [B]odies tell us a lot about people. We learn about their age, their sex, and perhaps their race, something about their strength, their state of health and their weight. We learn about their attractiveness, and we can see something of how they think of themselves and how they want to be seen. From their posture and from their style of bodily movement we may get an impression of their mood or even their job. (Glover, 1988, p. 70)

20  The Fictional Character A character’s appearance is defined both by given features as well as products of her own choices and tastes. Both these categories affect the plot. As Rimmon-Kenan (1983, p. 65) writes, “While the first group characterizes through contiguity alone, the second has additional overtones.” In the following passage, Coetzee (1999) gives a portrait of Melanie Isaacs to justify David Lurie’s lust for her: She smiles back, bobbing her head, her smile sly rather than shy. She is small and thin with close-cropped black hair, wide, almost Chinese cheekbones, large, dark eyes. Her outfits are always striking. Today she wears a maroon miniskirt with a mustard-coloured sweater and black tights; the gold baubles on her belt match the gold balls of her earrings. (Coetzee, 1999, p. 14) In Fingersmith (2002), after she weds Richard, Maud offers her meals, and finally her own silk gown, to Sue. Sue attributes this generosity to Maud’s melancholia (p. 165): “‘How well you look!’ she said, her blood rising. ‘The colour sets off your eyes and hair. I knew it would. Now you are quite the beauty—aren’t you? And I am plain—don’t you think?’” In truth, this is part of Richard’s plot (p. 297): “Why, how thin and pale you’ve grown!—and Sue grows sleeker by the hour, like one of Mother Cream’s black-faced sows. Get her into your best gown tomorrow, will you?” It is of course indisputable that a purely mental construction cannot entail corporal dimensions unless realised in another form, that is, visual media. At the same time though, if the fictional character is a person (or a personified animal or object) the reader will automatically visualise a hypothetical physicality, the way she will envisage the setting or follow the sequence of the actions. Aspects of a character’s physical appearance enhance exposition, attributing realism and vividness. Waters (2002) gives an account of Sue and Maud’s appearance, as the basis of their first impressions of each other: I had expected her, from all that Gentleman had said, to be quite out of the way handsome. But she was not that—at least. I did not think her so as I studied her then, I thought her looks were rather commonplace. She was taller than me by an inch or two—which is to say, of an ordinary height, since I am considered short; and her hair was fairer than mine—but not very fair—and her eyes, which were brown, were lighter. Her lip and cheek were very plump and smooth—she did lick me there, I will admit, for I liked to bite my own lip, and my cheeks had freckles, and my features are a rule were said to be sharp. I was also thought young-looking; but as to that—well,

The Fictional Character  21 I should have liked the people who thought it to have studied Maud Lilly as she stood before me now. For if I was young then she was an infant, she was a chick, she was a pigeon that knew nothing. (Waters, 2002, p. 66) Sharper than expectation, comes dismay. I have supposed she will resemble me, I have supposed she will be handsome: but she is a small, slight, spotted thing, with hair the colour of dust. Her chin comes almost to a point. Her eyes are brown, darker than mine. (Waters, 2002, p. 242) The disappointment in each of these accounts is ironic, since both girls will soon be infatuated with each other. Not all authors consider the external appearance of a character important. Referring to one of his characters, Kundera (1988) writes that [H]is body, as well as his face, remains completely unknown to us because the essence of his existential problem is rooted in other themes. That lack of information does not make him the less “living”. Because making a character “alive” means: getting to the bottom of his existential problem. (Kundera, 1988, p. 35) Depending on her aims, an author may or may not choose to describe specific features of her characters. Even in Kundera’s case however, the concept of a textual embodiment is unavoidable. Characters will move around, gesture and speak – all manifestations of a virtual physicality. I do not intend to dwell on concepts of artistic dualism here. A character can be a ghost, a spirit of all sorts, even an element of nature, such as fire. Her spatial navigation through the fictional words though, her very ability to speak words or assume facial expressions, presuppose a basic sort of physical manifestation. As Smith (1995, p. 31) explains, “Characters are not disembodied clusters of traits until their physiognomies are described they simply have unspecified physiognomies.” Seger (1990, p. 27) speaks of the ‘evocative’ function of physical description as a powerful tool to help highlight idiosyncratic aspects of character. This applies both to the character whose appearance is described, as well as ones that are exposited through the physical appearance of others. David Lurie contemplates his daughter’s appearance (1999, p. 85): “Ample is a kind word for Lucy. Soon she will be positively heavy. Letting herself go, as happens when one withdraws from the field of love.” And: He has not taken to Bev Shaw, a dumpy bustling little woman with black freckles, closed-cropped, wiry hair, and no neck. He does not

22  The Fictional Character like women who make no effort to be attractive. It is a resistance he has had to Lucy’s friends before. Nothing to be proud of a prejudice that has settled in his mind, settled down. His mind has become a refuge for old thoughts, idle, indigent, with nowhere else to go. (Coetzee, 1999, p. 93) Appearance is also linked to consistency. Unless the story takes place in a fantastical or futuristic world, certain restrictions are to be inferred by a character’s build, age, physical strength and so on, unless otherwise indicated. For example, we won’t expect to see a small child lifting a vehicle, unless somehow justified by the text, even in symbolic association. Finally, a special feature may constitute the character’s most distinct attribute, rendering her memorable and lifelike. In the case of a minor character, it will help her stand out from the stereotypical framework her limited appearance exposes her to. In The Ice Storm (1994, p. 26), when Janey Williams abandons Ben Hood in the bedroom, “Her flaws sprang to mind: her stretch marks, the port wine blemish on her left thigh, her lipsticked teeth and inexpertly manicured nails.” The ‘controlled’ aspects of one’s appearance can be linked to the ­social parameters of her identity, such as her religion, ethnicity, race, social class and financial status or a shift thereof from them (Craik, 1994; Crane, 2000; Kochman, 1981). Elements of style, such as dress code, haircuts, piercings and tattoos, tend to function in two different ways: (a) as indicators of the narrative’s historical, social and ethnographical background, and (b) as highlighters of personal views. This isn’t to say that all such elements acquire symbolic form, or that the reader will perceive them likewise. Rather, they constitute an integral part of a coherent image painted by the author, left for the reader to envisage further. Much like proper names, clothing plays a fundamental part in Fingersmith’s (2002) plot. This becomes evident from the beginning, where Sue prepares for the role she is about to assume in the Briar: …Gentleman sent me upstairs, to put on the dress that Phil had got for me. It was a plain brown dress, more or less the colour of my hair; and the walls of our kitchen being also brown, when I came downstairs again I could hardly be seen. I should have rathered a blue gown, or a violet one; but Gentleman said it was the perfect dress for a sneak or for a servant—and so all the more perfect for me, who was going to Briar to be both. (Waters, 2002, p. 38) Indeed, a person’s apparel, length of hair, beard and moustache may indicate personal tastes, political stances, profession and spatio-temporal

The Fictional Character  23 surroundings. As Glover explains, (1988, pp. 134–135), “Out of a mixture of natural development and conscious choices, people develop a distinctive style that can be their most recognizable feature…. Style combines chosen forms of self-expression with what we are given naturally.” The ‘natural’ part of Glover’s equation in this case is provided by the author, as the inherent product of her perceptual and creative amalgamation. In The Ice Storm (1994), Wendy is characterised through her clothes: To class she wore ponchos and handmade sweaters … She had toe socks and clogs and painter’s pants. Wendy’s Tretorn tennis sneakers were filched from Mike’s Sports not two days ago (the day before Thanksgiving) and now the patent leather gear she was supposed to wear for the holidays was safely enclosed in a Tretorn box on the 5 ½ shelf in the back of the very same store. Wendy wore the uniforms other kids wore, but she thought a lot about black gowns and putting spiders in the pockets of her girlfriend’s hip-huggers. (Moody, 1998, p. 31) Different choices of apparel also highlight the difference in character between Elena Hood and Janey Williams, as well as Ben Hood’s tastes. While getting ready for the Halfords’ party, Elena confronts her husband: You want to wear your ridiculous ascot out to a cocktail party. That ridiculous ascot that doesn’t go with those pants at all. You want to wear that out, and you want me to shake hands with your friends and make conversation. And you want me to dress up in some outfit that shows off a lot of cleavage. (Moody, 1998, p. 71) And when Janey appears at the party, Ben notices: Janey was in black, silk pajamas, the top opened to just below her breasts. No bra. At her cleavage, turquoise beads swayed. As she leaned down to take up her drinks, she stilled the shimmering pajama top with one hand. Her earth-colored lipstick and eye shadow matched her brown stiletto heels. Her frosted-blond hair was flawlessly arranged, like a fibreglass waterfall. (Moody, 1998, p. 122) In Fingersmith (2002, p. 353), when Mrs Sucksby and Dainty offer Maud gowns to choose from, she finds them hideous, much to Dainty’s dismay: Dainty sees them and screams. The gowns are all of silk: one of violet, with yellow ribbon trimming it, another of green with a silver

24  The Fictional Character stripe and a third of crimson…. I have not known such colours, such fabrics, such gowns, exist. I imagine myself in them, upon the streets of London. My heart has sunk. I say, “They are hideous, hideous”…. “Haven’t you a grey,” I say, “or a brown, or a black?” Dainty looks at me in disgust. (Waters, 2002, p. 353) Later, when Sue storms into Mrs Sucksby’s house, she finds Maud transformed from a lady to a Borough girl: I looked again at Maud—at her neat ear which, I now saw, had a crystal drop falling from it on a wire of gold; and at the curls in her fair hair; and at her dark eye-brows. They had been tweezered into two fine arches. Above her chair—I had not seen this before, either, but it seemed all of a piece with the drops, the curls and arches, the bangles on her wrist—above her chair there was hanging, from a beam, a little cage of wicker with a yellow bird in it. (Waters, 2002, p. 493) Specific dress codes and use of uniforms have always been dictated in many workplaces and professions (Crane, 2000); in western societies, fashion can be a statement of political power (Craik, 1994); during the eighteenth century, tattoos became so popular in Japan that they were considered an alternative to clothing (Craik, 1994); there was a time when the use of a hat indicated strong social affiliations (Crane, 2000); the shift in women’s societal status and her entrance in the workplace were displayed by the change of her dressing choices (Crane, 2000); changes in the types of apparel purchased demonstrated socio-cultural shifts through the eras (Crane, 2000); the black culture is characterised by colourful, intense and expansive expressions of style (Kochman, 1981); and so in all cultures and societies, such elements of appearance play a predominant role. As Diane Crane (2000, p. 1) notes, “Clothing, as one of the most visible forms of consumption, performs a major role in the social construction of identity,” and (ibid, p. 13) “Fashion contributes to the redefinition of social identities by continually attributing new meanings to artefacts.” In Fingersmith (2002), Maud escapes Mrs Sucksby’s house in a gown and slippers, with no hat on: Everybody stares—men, women, children—even here, where the road is busy again, they stare. I think of tearing off a fold of skirt to cover my naked head. I think of begging a coin. If I knew what coin to beg for, how much a hat would cost me, where it might be bought, I would do it. (Waters, 2002, p. 371)

The Fictional Character  25 When Sue flees from the madhouse with Charles’s help, she has to steal clothes to become invisible again: [I]n a trunk upstairs I found a pair of black shoes, more or less my size, and a print dress, put in paper. I thought the dress might have been the one that the woman was married in, and I swear to God! I almost didn’t take it; but in the end, I did. And I also took a black straw bonnet, a shawl, a pair of woollen stockings…. (Waters, 2002, p. 465) Indeed, as Craik adds (ibid, p. 46), “The ways in which bodies are fashioned through clothes, make-up and demeanour constitute identity, sexuality and social position. In other words, clothed bodies are tools of self-management.” Indicative is the scene where Sue has to adjust her hair-style to fit her new position at Briar: First, they washed my hair. I wore my hair then, like lots of the Borough girls wore theirs, divided in three, with a comb at the back and, at the sides, a few fat curls. If you turned the curls with a very hot iron, having first made the hair wet with sugar-and-water, you could make them hard as anything; they would last for a week like that, or longer. Gentleman, however, said he thought the style too fast for a country lady: he made me wash my hair till it was perfectly smooth, then had me divide it once—just the once—then pin it in a plain knot at the back of my head. (Waters, 2002, p. 35) It is worth clarifying that a character’s ‘controlled’ appearance can be a useful characterisation tool, not a necessary one. Nor do I imply that the author should be restricted to demonstrating the stereotypical aspects of a fictional person. As already suggested, a character can be defined both by her representation as well as her deviation from her stereotypical framework. In that respect, we return to Kundera’s point and the one rule that I presume most writers would agree on: that writing as a form of art is not a dogma and elements of technique cannot be viewed as rules set in stone. In conclusion, a person’s physical appearance is a strong element of her identity and as such a useful tool for the author to achieve coherent character exposition – like every other means of characterisation, though, it is not to be abused. Stein (1995, p. 187) warns against an abundance of information that will deprive the reader of her own input. As Ivy Compton-Burnett (1959, p. 307) wrote, I should have thought that my actual characters were described enough to help people to imagine them. However detailed such description is, I am sure that everyone forms his own conceptions that are different from everyone else’s including the author’s.

26  The Fictional Character 2.4.3  Past Identities A person can be viewed as an amalgam of her collective histories, shaped and defined by past experiences. One’s life history is an integral part of her psychological make-up (Allport, 1937). As Glover (1988, p. 141) points out, “If all my memories were obliterated, this would obviously have a disastrous effect on my sense of who I am.” Egri (1960, p. 48) similarly stated that “Our own childhood recollections, memories, experiences, become an indelible part of us and will reflect upon and colour our minds.” Indeed, viewing the person as a unity moving through time, her previous selves do not perish, but rather stay with her, even if only partially. While not sufficient in itself, background information can illuminate situations, sentiments, fears and goals. It is not an expository tool but rather an explanatory device for internal consistency, with details that, though they will not necessarily reach the page, can be implied in order to render the character comprehensive and her actions coherent. Background can account for present choices, or shifts in a person’s existential, socio-cultural and spatio-temporal status. As Seger (1990, p. 47) writes “The current situation is a result of decisions and events from the past. And the choices that have been made will determine other choices in the future.” And for Glover (1988, p. 146), “Contact with the past is a reminder of alternatives to the present pattern of life. This sharpens awareness of the relationships you have helped to create, and of the pattern of your own life while doing so.” Seger (ibid, p. 48) distinguishes between two types of background information: the first acts as a causative force in the construction of the narrative, accounting for present motivations, choices and conditions. The second adds those dimensions that make her ‘lifelike,’ a convincing human portrait. She also (ibid, p. 49) emphasises the importance of the “sense memories,” referring to the impact of past events on the character’s present idiosyncrasy. In The Ice Storm (1998), Moody paints such a meticulous portrait of his protagonists’ past that the narrative unfolds so naturally, it almost seems biographic. Early on, we learn of Elena’s mother and her alcoholism, which haunted Elena from primary school. Enter the picture of marital misery, separate bedrooms and absence: Her mother fell down the stairs and they left her there, at her father’s instructions. Her mother disrobed on the front lawn. Her mother locked herself into a shed, looking for stashed treasure. She might have stayed there for days, if it hadn’t been for the gardener…. Her father made sure Elena knew about her mother’s condition. He called her down from her room to witness each infraction against him, against his success. So when she was a child and her mother

The Fictional Character  27 tried to take her own life with sleeping pills, he induced vomiting, called for an ambulance, and then brought Elena into the bedroom. (Moody, 1998, p. 58) In Fingersmith (2002) character histories determine motivations and actions. Within the first handful of pages, the reader is offered Sue’s account of her own past: that Mrs Sucksby was paid to keep her for a short period but looked after her for something short of 20 years, which sealed Sue’s gratitude and sense of belonging to the Borough: “She let me sleep beside her, in her own bed. She shined my hair with vinegar. You treat jewels like that.” (Waters, 2002, p. 12) Sue’s past also helps her in her present. Coming from a house of thieves, she knows how to grease locks and cut key copies. This is how she and Maud escape the Briar, and the way she manages to flee the madhouse with Charles’s help. Maud’s history, on the other hand, leads her straight into her present actions. Thinking herself the daughter of a madwoman, Maud describes how she was taken from the place she considered home; how her uncle and his housekeeper, Mrs Stiles, abused her as a child; and how she was forced to work on Christopher Lilly’s collection of erotic material, unsuitable to a child her age, until Rivers appears. An author may study her character’s possible history thoroughly, or simply build a referential framework around it. For example, Kundera (1988, p. 36) reveals that “Of the historical circumstances, I keep only those that create a revelatory existential situation for my characters.” Such economy of information may suffice to lead the author towards paths of consistent linearity, or she may find that the more she perceives, the richer her conveyed portrait. In both cases, however, only a minimal amount of such knowledge is useful to the reader. In The Course of Love (2017), de Botton doesn’t tire the reader with endless details about his protagonists’ backgrounds, but the information he gives is sufficient for us to make sense of their present. For example (p. 11), we learn that Kirsten was raised in Inverness by a single mother after the father had ‘lost interest in the family’: “It wasn’t an ideal start to make me hopeful about people, she says with a wry smile. …‘May be that’s why the thought of “happily ever after” has never been my thing.” In Disgrace (1999), Coetzee gives little yet sufficient information of David Lurie’s past: He himself has no son. His childhood was spent in a family of women. As mother, aunts, sisters fell away, they were replaced in due course by mistresses, wives, a daughter. The company of women made of him a lover of women and, to an extent, a womanizer. With his height, his good bones, his olive skin, his flowing hair, he could always count on a degree of magnetism. If he looked at a woman in

28  The Fictional Character a certain way, with a certain intent, she would return his look, he could rely on that. That was how he lived; for years, for decades, that was the backbone of his life. (Coetzee, 1999, p. 9) Referring to one’s recollections of the past, Glover (1988, p. 149) speaks of ‘abridgment’ and ‘editing’: To abridge the inner story is to edit it. The editing may take two forms. Wishful thinking, fantasy and self-deception may play their part: bits of the film we do not like are lost in the cutting room. This first kind of editing makes a gap between the inner story and how we really are…. The other kind of editing does not add or leave out any incidents, but colours what happened by taking an attitude towards it. (Glover, 1988, pp. 149–150) Much like all other aspects of the character concept, background information should not be forcefully constructed but emerge as a result of comprehension of human nature. In addition, background information that is conveyed through the eyes and experience of the character should appear more as a subjective retrospection rather than a detailed report. 2.4.4  Society and Environment As already noted by Storry and Childs, a person’s identity is partly defined by those parameters that determine her as a designated individual in her surrounding environment. Such parameters include her ethnicity, race, religion (or lack thereof), profession, education, sexuality, as well as her social and financial class. All these components also define the fictional identity. As in real life, some of them can play an integral role in one’s self-determination or the formation of new identities. A person may be characterised by her participation in a group, or even her detachment from one. She can choose to stay faithful to her origins, or distance herself from them by establishing a new identity within reference groups that will represent her better (Burr, 2002). Stein (1995) encapsulates the functionality of culture and class as follows: A culture consists of the behaviour patterns, beliefs, traditions, institutions, taste, and other characteristics of a community passed from one generation to another…. A class is a stratum of society whose members share cultural and social characteristics. (Stein, 1995, p. 75)

The Fictional Character  29 Cultural diversity also dictates diversity of values, and values represent a significant part of one’s identity (Williams, 1995). A culture may account for one’s stances on notions such as involvement, independence and politeness (Tannen, 1992); expectations and presumptions of decency and morality do not burden women in the black culture, as they do in the white one (Kochman, 1981); and disclosure of personal information acquires different significance in these two cultures (Kochman, 1981). In Fingersmith (2002, p. 6), Sue describes how Mrs Sucksby would calm the crying infants in her care by giving them spoonfuls of gin. Growing up there, Sue considers this normal. Yet when she rides the train from London with an upper-class lady who is trying to comfort a discontented baby and suggests this solution, the woman is appalled and turns her back on her straight away (Waters, 2002, p. 53). Moody (1998) touches upon the finer threads of cultural norms through Wendy’s views: Wendy wanted to know why conversations failed and how to teach compassion and why people fell out of love and she wanted to know it all by the time she got back to the house. She wanted her father to crusade for less peer pressure in the high school and to oppose the bombing of faraway neutral countries and to support limits on presidential power and to devise a plan whereby each kid under eighteen in New Canaan had to spend one afternoon a week with Dan Holmes’s sister, Sarah Joe, or with that other kid, Will Fuller, whom everybody called faggot. (Moody, 1998, p. 50) Moving on to race and ethnicity, Joane Nagel (2003) defines them as follows: By ethnicity I refer to differences between individuals and groups in skin colour, language, religion, culture, national origin/nationality, or sometimes geographic region. Ethnicity subsumes both nationalism and race. Current notions of race are centered exclusively on visibly (usually skin colour) distinctions among populations. (Nagel, 2003, p. 6) Nagel (2003, p. 42) moves on to explain that these categories exceed simple notions of superficial representation, underlining, for example, that being white or black bears great significance and consequence in certain cultures. As she elaborates, Ethnicity is … the result of a dialectical process that emerges from the interaction between individuals and those whom they meet as they pass through life. An individual’s ethnicity is a negotiated

30  The Fictional Character social fact … [It is] a matter of structure and power: which ethnic categories are available in a society to be sorted into, and who gets to do the sorting. (Nagel, 2003, p. 42) This is precisely the essence in the following dialogue between Lucy and her father in Disgrace (1999): You want to know why I have not laid a particular charge with the police. I will tell you, as long as you agree not to raise the subject again. The reason is that, as far as I am concerned, what happened to me is a purely private matter. In another time, in another place it might be held to be a public matter. But in this place, at this time, it is not. It is my business, mine alone. This place being what? This place being South Africa! (Coetzee, 1999, p. 148) Petrus represents a different reality altogether. Lucy explains (p. 84), “He and his wife have the old stable. I’ve put in electricity. It’s quite comfortable. He has another wife in Adelaide, and children, some of them grown up. He goes off and spends time there occasionally.” When confronted by Lurie for sheltering Pollux, Petrus offers to marry Lucy: ‘You will marry Lucy’ [Lurie] says, carefully. ‘Explain to me what you mean. No, wait, rather don’t explain. This is not something I want to hear. This is not how we do things’. We: he is on the point of saying, We Westerners. ‘Yes, I can see, I can see,’ says Petrus. He is positively chuckling. ‘But I tell you, then you tell Lucy. Then it is over, all this badness.’ (Coetzee, 1999, p. 271) Continuing, a person’s profession can describe her multifariously: it may reflect a process of self-creation or a sacrifice that led her away from it (Glover, 1988). In many cultures, education and work constitute significant parameters of identity (Storry and Childs, 1997). Issues of power and solidarity are also indicative of one’s position and the role expectations that form by it, and they may affect her relationship with others (Burr, 2002; Tannen, 1992). In Disgrace (1999), Lurie’s profession is a significant part of his character: Because he has no respect for the material he teaches, he makes no impression on his students. They look through him when he speaks, forget his name. Their indifference galls him more than he will

The Fictional Character  31 admit. Nevertheless he fulfils to the letter his obligations toward them, their parents, and their state … He continues to teach because it provides him with a livelihood; also because it teaches him humility, brings it home to him who he is in the world. The irony does not escape him: that the one who comes to teach learns the keenest of lessons, while those who come to learn learn nothing. (Coetzee, 1999, p. 6) Carried away by passion, Lurie does not realise that due to his position, the consequences on both Melanie Isaacs and his job are going to be grave. This is depicted in the following dialogue among members of the university committee Lurie was asked to attend: Farodia Rassool intervenes … ‘Yes, he says he is guilty; but when we try to get specificity, all of a sudden it is not abuse of a young woman he is confessing to, just an impulse he could not resist, with no mention of the pain he has caused, no mention of the long history of exploitation of which this is part’. (Coetzee, 1999, p. 68) Then Desmond Swarts says: It would help to cool down what has become a very heated situation. Ideally we would all have preferred to resolve this case out of the glare of the media. But that has not been possible. It has received a lot of attention, it has acquired overtones that are beyond our control. All eyes are on the university to see how we handle it. (Coetzee, 1999, p. 69) The fact that Lurie is a professor in an established institution renders his position all the more difficult. This set-up affects decisively the way this incident of sexual exploitation is treated. On the contrary, when Lucy is raped, there is no trial, no investigation of the culprits. In Fingersmith (2002, pp. 525–526), Sue cannot even bear to consider the possibility of a ‘regular’ job to live on after Mrs Sucksby dies, and much like everyone else in the world she was raised into, she considers it to be an alternative to being ‘robbed’. Even the idea of joining a group of street thieves is perceived by her as degradation. It is precisely the view that she is trapped within limited to no choice, that will instigate her to return to the Briar and reunite with Maud. Allport (1979, pp. 321–322) explains the classification between ‘achieved’ and ‘ascribed’ social statuses as follows: “In the first type, the individual may by his own efforts (or the efforts of his parents) attain a certain location in the hierarchy. On the other hand, ascribed status is hereditary in its force.”

32  The Fictional Character In Fingersmith (2002), Sue, the daughter of a noblewoman, is raised by Mrs Sucksby as part of a family of thieves in the Borough. On the contrary, Mrs Sucksby’s real daughter, Maud, is trained to be a lady with refined manners by Christopher Lilly. And Rivers ‘works’ himself into an ‘ascribed’ society status, according to which he was raised as a noble but lost his wealth in gambling. His deception is uncovered when he is murdered (p. 517): “[I]t turned out that all of his tales of being a gentleman’s son were so much puff. His father and mother ran a small kind of draper’s shop, in a street off the Holloway Road. His sister taught piano.” Culture also shapes patterns of communication between men and women, forming expectations and conventions in etiquette. As Tannen (1992, p. 109) explains, “Male-female conversation is always cross-­ cultural communication. Culture is simply a network of habits and patterns gleaned from past experience, and women and men have different past experiences.” Wendy’s thoughts of self-comparison with her brother, Paul in this passage from The Ice Storm (1998) reflect this point precisely: She thought Paul got all the breaks. He was the smarter one, the badly adapted one. There was no discussion of her being sent away, too. Wendy was a beauty, a pixie, a nymph, a sorceress, but she wasn’t going to be any captain of industry. She could work the rooms of the P.T.A. (Moody, 1998, p. 135) In Fingersmith (2002, p. 376), when Maud escapes the Lant Street house and runs to Mr Hawtrey’s shop of erotic literature for shelter. When she enters, all activity ceases and the customers, all male, stare at her and urge her out, as she is not fit for the place. And as Graham (2003, p. 437) asserts, “Disgrace points to a context where women are regarded as property, and are liable for protection only insofar as they belong to men”; hence, the offer of Petrus to marry Lucy for protection in exchange for her land (1999, p. 271) Finally, a person’s sexuality is an integral part of their being. At the same time, it is embedded in an ethnic construct’s ethical and collective extensions (Nagel, 2003). As a result, sexual orientation bears the weight of externally assigned moral values that determine a person’s acceptance or rejection by other group memberships. In Disgrace (1999) it is implied that Lucy is raped because she is ‘unowned’ and therefore ‘huntable’ (Graham, 2003). Although her sexual orientation may not be what provokes her attackers per se, it is still a logical extension of the cause, rendering its impact of being violated by men even graver.

The Fictional Character  33 For Nagel (2003) sexuality pertains to, “[M]en” and “women” as socially, mainly genitally defined individuals with culturally defined appropriate sexual tastes, partners, and activities. There is no single universally shared conception of natural or proper sexual desires, sexual partners, or sexual activities, rather, there is as much variety in sexual practice as there are human cultures. (Nagel, 2003, p. 8) In Fingersmith (2002), in the nineteenth-century England, homosexuality is considered to be little more than a social disease. Upon the doctors’ first encounter, Rivers uses what he has learned about Maud’s true feelings to enhance the notion that Sue is indeed mad: ‘Susan,’ he says, ‘you do well to feel shame in behalf of your mistress. You need feel none, however, in behalf of yourself. No guilt attaches to you. You did nothing to invite or encourage the gross attentions my wife, in her madness, attempted to force on you—’ … I have begun to weep. ‘Surely’, says Richard, coming to me, putting his hand heavily upon my shoulder, ‘surely these tears speak for themselves? Do we need to name the unhappy passion? Must we oblige Miss Smith to rehearse the words, the artful poses—the caresses—to which my distracted wife has made her subject? Aren’t we gentlemen?’ (Waters, 2002, p. 301) This piece of information will aggravate Sue’s situation in the madhouse further. In the following scene, the nurses play a cruel game of jumping on Sue to see who will crush her harder: She pushed herself up on her hands, so that her face was above me but her bosom and stomach and legs still hard on my own; and she moved her hips. She moved them in a certain way. My eyes flew open. She gave me a leer. ‘Like it, do you?’ she said, still moving. ‘No? We heard you did’. And at that, the nurses roared. They roared, and I saw on their faces as they gazed at me that nasty look I had seen before but never understood. I understood it now, of course; and all at once I guessed what Maud must have said to Dr Christie, that time at Mrs Cream’s. (Waters, 2002, p. 442) In The Glorious Heresies (2016), Ryan Cusack’s confidence and his inner states are largely dependent on his relationship with Karine. In fact,

34  The Fictional Character at the very opening of the novel, the reader meets him at the point he considers as the transition from boyhood to manhood; the moment he has brought Karine home: He left the boy outside its own front door. Farewell to it, and good luck to it. He wasn’t going to feed it anymore; from here on in it would be squared shoulders and jaws, and strong arms and best feet forward. He left the boy a pile of mangled, skinny limbs and stepped through the door of a newborn man, stinging a little in the sights of the sprite guiding his metamorphosis. Karine D’Arcy was her name. (McInerney, 2016, p. 3) Some of these parameters will be directly related to the plot in a causeand-effect mode, while others will simply serve to attribute realism to the created portrait. Since their function is specific, they will presuppose expectations of either conformity or justified deviation. The individuation of each fictional personality built on this framework encapsulates the character concept itself. Cultural diversity will also affect character relations, as it encompasses strong similarities and vast differences in the perception of personal moralities, codes of conduct and the formation of expectations. If elements of a group membership define a person’s identity, they will automatically emphasise the dissimilarities with all others. As Taylor (1985, pp. 269–270) reminds us, “People from another society can be quite opaque to us.” Conflict is likely to arise by miscommunication among representatives of different cultures, as it often happens in the international state of affairs (Tannen, 1992). The example of Disgrace (1999) given earlier depicting Lurie’s failure to communicate with Petrus is indicative. At the same time, a person may be assigned characteristics she never intended to represent (Burr, 2002). This is where the notion of the stereotype comes into play, and the author should ensure that characters are consistent with their cultural identities but also individualised within it. A primary example is given by Allport (1979, p. 109), who dispels the myth of aggressiveness being interlinked to physical features, such as skin colour. Allport (1979, p. 179) moves on to clarify that “[E]very label applied to a given person refers properly only to one aspect of his nature.” A character cannot be created only a small particle of a stereotypical image. This is especially the case for minor characters, whose limited function in the novel does not allow for extensive characterisation. In their study on the various causes of criminality, Eysenck and Gudjonsson (1989) explain that Whether individuals are absolutely or relatively poor and deprived is less relevant to their actions than whether they feel themselves to be poor and deprived, and in any case such feelings, may lead to

The Fictional Character  35 radically different actions according to whether one is or is not a religious Christian, a confirmed Marxist, or a Fascist. (Eysenck and Gudjonsson, 1989, p. 6) In Disgrace (2002), Lurie thinks of Soraya, the prostitute he’s been visiting: In bed Soraya is not effusive. Her temperament is in fact rather quiet, quiet and docile. In her general opinions she is surprisingly moralistic. She is offended by tourists who break their breasts (‘udders’, she calls them) on public beaches; she thinks vagabonds should be rounded up and put to works sweeping the streets. How she reconciles her opinions with her line of business he does not ask. (Coetzee, 1999, p. 2) In Fingersmith (2002, p. 8), Sue is raised in a house of thieves whom she loves as family and whose members she considers “better than magicians.” The thieves in Waters’s novel are not depicted any more or less moral than members of the upper class. Christopher Lilly believes himself to be a noble scholar (p. 194) yet he cast out his sister, abandoned her supposed infant daughter to a madhouse, and retrieved her only to imprison her and make a secretary of her (p. 187). As it becomes evident, all such components do not exist in isolation, but work with each other to compound the representation of oneself to the rest of the world. Cultural identities affect, and even define, a person’s political beliefs, ethical values, external appearance and general codes of conduct. A character that wishes to flee a dominating religion may have to seek new geographical surroundings, endorse other habits and form her ethnic and socio-cultural identity anew. Issues of dignity will be challenged in racial or ethnographic platforms, such as in Disgrace (1999). A character’s moral values may be shaped by class inequality and reform in light of a new life, as in Fingersmith (2002). 2.4.5  The Inner Self Moving on to Storry and Childs’s second side to identity, we find that it entails three of the previously discussed conditions of personhood. Indeed, a person’s awareness of herself, her intentional states, as well as her (self-) evaluating abilities constitute an integral part of her being. I begin with Taylor’s (1985, p. 263) statement that “A person is an agent who has an understanding of self as an agent, and can make plans for his/her own life.” He proceeds to add that The general notion of a person includes not only self-awareness but holding values…. Persons apply values to the facts and possibilities

36  The Fictional Character of which they are aware. These values can be seen as chosen or as arising from psychological causes, or as both…. Guided by these valuations, we choose. And so we have the capacities definitive of a person: self-awareness, values, choices and from all these the ability to make life-plans. (Taylor, 1985, pp. 266–267) In most cases, fictional characters are aware of their existence within their world, and are assigned their own thoughts and ideas, conveyed by point-of-view. For such virtual consciousness to bear any significance, they are also allowed the ability to feel and react towards such thoughts, and the reception of the fictional world’s external stimuli. A fictional self is thus composed of attitudes, emotions and values, which she projects in the form of intentions, motivations and internal conflicts. Dennett (1976, p. 179) explains the concept of the intentional system as follows: An Intentional system is a system whose behaviour can be … predicted by relying on ascriptions to the system of beliefs and desires. There may in every case be other ways of predicting and explaining the behaviour of an Intentional system … but the Intentional stance may be the handiest or most effective or in any case a successful stance to adopt, which suffices for the object to be an Intentional system. (Dennett, 1976, p. 179) A person’s character can be defined by her stance towards her own goals and commitments (Kupperman, 1991). In the real world, we can only presume upon the actions and choices of others. In fiction, the reader uses the textual cues in order to make assumptions about characters’ intentions (Bower, 1978; Margolin, 1986). A character’s internal map, her desires, fears, wishes and values as motivational forces, guide the author to draw the entire narrative. It may reflect the novel’s causality, or constitute part of a more complex narrative web (Lodge, 2002, p. 183). In The Ice Storm (1998), the reader learns about Wendy: When her mother scrunched up her face and dispensed morality, Wendy’s ambition was to be as unlike her mother as possible in every way. In fact, this was almost always her ambition. Her mother’s judgmental rap was her only real conversation … [T]he significance of her mother’s unhappiness settled over the house and gathered all of the Hoods around it. To avoid this trouble, Wendy got herself into trouble elsewhere. (Moody, 1998, p. 132)

The Fictional Character  37 This paragraph’s effect is bilateral: it serves as an explicatory device for Wendy’s behaviour and her inner world, and characterises Elena. Paul wants Libbets (p. 89), but he also wants (p. 102) “to make a better family than the one from which he came” because he considers himself to be (p. 196) “a loser from a family of losers.” Again, the conflict rising from familial relationships, shared by all members of the Hood family, is directly related to the plot. And in The Glorious Heresies (2016), Ryan Cusack is struggling to re-determine himself outside the relationship with his father, perpetually redefined by that with Karine and evolving (or even discovering himself) in his interactions with Georgie. Goals can be determined by external forces or reflect the character’s inner states (Varotsis, 2013). Whether part of a conscious authorial strategy or not, a character’s motivation plays a predominant role in the unfolding narrative. Some writers, like Egri (1960), have even equalled motivation to the premise itself. It is the creative portrayal of life interpreted by the inherent understanding of human experience that is captured through the depiction of a character’s motivational forces. A character’s will is created by those elements in her cognitive and emotional map that help her (re-)evaluate her position in the world. Its force is manifested by a person’s struggle to (re-) define herself in the arisen and reshaped circumstances through which she may, or may not achieve her goals. A complex web of past and present desires and occurrences, goals and events affect, and sometimes define, the future. Character motivation acts as a principal initiator of action, the impact of which will create new responses (Varotsis, 2013). In Disgrace (1999), Lurie is driven by desire to such a degree that he fails to predict the consequences of his actions. It is because of those consequences precisely that he will leave Cape Town and visit Lucy in the Eastern Cape. Lurie confesses himself to be “a servant of eros” (p. 67) and that Melanie “struck up a fire in [him]” (p. 222). He is driven by passion and impulse to such a degree, that he pays a detective to track down Soraya (p. 13), sneaks into the enrolment office to obtain Melanie’s details (p. 22), and even notes her as present and marks her despite her absence from his class (p. 32). When he comes across Melanie (pp. 14–15), “He is mildly smitten with her. It is no great matter: barely a term passes when he does not fall for one or other of his charges. Cape Town: a city prodigal of beauty, of beauties.” Gilbert Ryle (1975, p. 111) explicated the notion of motivation through consistency and purpose. As he wrote (ibid), “The class of actions done from motives coincides with the class of actions describable as more or less intelligent.” I propose that within this premeditation lies the conceptual difference between character motive and internal conflict. Motivation and internal conflict exist sequentially, the former deriving from the latter. Egri (1960, p. 65) explained conflict as the result of

38  The Fictional Character a character’s internal and surrounding contradictions. Expanding this, I propose that the original sources of such contradictions may lie within any of the parameters discussed earlier: her appearance, her personal history or issues related to her social identity. An accumulation of elements in her emotional and cognitive assemblage, they affect or even dictate her navigation through the narrative. This is how character is revealed. I will return to this point in my final chapter where I will discuss character exposition in further detail. In Fingersmith (2002) Sue agrees to become part of Gentleman’s plot, her motivation being the promised payment. Her internal conflict is the guilt surfacing every now and again during the scheme, peaking when she falls in love with Maud. Her external conflict emerges as she tries to escape the madhouse and reclaim her position in the Borough. Maud, on the other hand, seeks liberty. This is her motivation when she agrees to become Rivers’s accomplice (p. 227): “This is the liberty— the rare and sinister liberty—he has come to Briar to offer. For payment he wants my trust, my promise, my future silence; and one half of my fortune.” And (p. 230) “My liberty beckons: gaugeless, fearful, inevitable as death.” Her internal conflict is the same as Sue’s – sentiments of guilt that will consume her once she falls for her. Her own external conflict will be to flee Lant Street, and free Sue from the madhouse. Conflict should follow a coherent rhythm that renders it natural and believable. Abrupt or unjustified transitions will only confuse the reader, and since narrative is a constructed foundation of character and event, unpremeditated complexity will jeopardise the suspension of disbelief. As Elster (1983) notes, Consistency, in fact, is what rationality in the thin sense is all about: consistency within the belief system; consistency within the system of desires; and consistency between beliefs and desires on the one hand and the action for which they are reasons on the other hand. (Elster, 1983, p. 1) Recapitulating, I have proposed that a fictional identity is inspired by the fundamental elements of a real person, constituted by social and idiosyncratic parameters. Emotions, attitudes and values are all part of the character concept (Seger, 1990), and in collaboration with the external stimulus they define intentions, conflicts and motivations. This second ‘version’ of one’s identity thus is shaped by and is indicative of the one discussed earlier. As it emerges, identity becomes a bilateral concept the constituent parts of which co-exist in interaction. I will close this section by presenting Kupperman’s (1991, p. 7) account of ‘no personality’: “If personality is, in many contexts, a projection of oneself into other people’s consciousness in a distinctive and possibly appealing way, then any failure to project can count as no personality.”

The Fictional Character  39 Since the fictional character is inevitably deprived of an actual physical presence, it is only the mosaic of her identity that can render her explicit and distinct in the reader’s mind. The author is thus called to amalgamate the common and the extraordinary, in order to present the reader with memorable fictional identities.

2.5  Summary of Conclusions The aim of this chapter was to lay the foundations upon which I can build my creative approach to character construction. The principal idea governing this work is that, as fiction bears some semblance to reality (to be discussed in Chapter 4), so can the character be made in the image of her real counterpart – the human being, as individually perceived by the novelist. It is precisely the unique way each of us tends to view the world that allows us to leave our imprint on the page. Put differently, once the inner frame is set, character can materialise through a plethora of shapes and colours to resemble a consistent entity with deducible behaviour. The notions of personhood outlined here aim to serve precisely as such a framework. It’s the uniqueness of an identity, whose parameters I just explored, alongside the sense of congruence we attribute, that will allow the reader to follow our textual creation from beginning to end. Let’s now look at those elements that invite the reader to engage in this process.

3 Character and the Reader

3.1  The Reader of Fiction Over the course of literary history, as narrative texts were born, diversified and changed in technique and focus, the reader ceased to be a blurry figure in the background and became an active participant in the process of text reconstruction and meaning assemblage (Iser, 1974). During the twentieth century, the reader’s role was emphasised like never before (Bonnefoy, 1995; Iser, 1974), and new scholarly discussions emerged under the topic of ‘reader-response theory’ (Leitch et al., 2001). Soon enough, the reader could be implied, virtual, historical, and even a ­super-reader (Leitch et al., 2001, p. 18). A thorough investigation of reader typology is irrelevant to the goals of this book. I do suggest, however, that the importance of reader participation in the (re-)construction of the fictional text should be highlighted and explicated to every new writer. The purpose of this chapter thus is to discuss the reader, both as a concept but also as an actual entity. As a novelist and a researcher, I have come to conclude two vital points that govern my professional philosophy and my goals: (a) my texts map and convey my particular signals, ideas and possibilities to my recipients, and (b) unless I define them from the beginning (by choosing to disclose my work to specific individuals for certain reasons), recipients remain notional, and their educational, cultural and social particulars are none of my concern and beyond my control. No matter where my writing takes me within my creative freedom, I am fully aware that the way in which the content of my work will be perceived can vary significantly from reader to reader, culture to culture, idiosyncrasy to idiosyncrasy. In the pages that follow, I will outline my attitudes towards the reader of fiction; I will present you with my idea of the ‘universal’ reader, and I will explore issues of cognitive and emotional response towards the text. 3.1.1  The Reader as an Active Participant There has been many a discussion on whom the author writes for. Theories of moral responsibility (Atwood, 2003; Calvino, 1989; Phelan, 2005),

Character and the Reader  41 reader response (Iser, 1974, 2001; Preston, 1970) and textual comprehension (Chartier, 1995; Williams; 1993) have been analysed in scholarly works, which in their majority are characterised by a conjoining factor: that the author does write for someone, sharing a collaborative relationship with her, as the text is created by the former only to be constantly recreated by the latter (Cohan, 1983; Oatley, 2003; Preston, 1970). The text exists insofar as there is someone to reconceive it, guiding its constructs (such as the fictional character) to come alive in the reader’s imagination. And I certainly agree with Keith Oatley (2003) that the reader’s individual interpretation is but the rewriting of the author’s story. Wolfgang Iser (1972, p. 279) made a distinction between the textual production of the narrative and its reception by the reader, calling each level ‘artistic’ and ‘aesthetic’ respectively. As he explained (ibid, pp. 280– 285), the literary text creatively challenges and enhances the reader’s imagination, and she, in her turn, makes sense of its spatio-temporal sequence, filling in the gaps where necessary. A writer’s task towards her readership, therefore, is bilateral. First, she is called to recognise readers as predominant figures in the reconstruction of the novel. This doesn’t mean that her creative work must be limited or constantly shaped by presumptions or fears of potential tastes and views but rather that, despite her best of intentions, once the text is passed to the reader, she is entitled to her own interpretations. Second, she must grasp what makes a narrative consistent and accessible to them or else how suspension of disbelief can be ascertained. This second parameter will be discussed later on. Right now, let’s focus on the reader herself. 3.1.2  The Author–Reader Contract Quite often, I stumble upon the view that a reader who is inclined to respond emotionally to a text is not as sophisticated or ‘trained,’ compared to the one who manages to maintain a certain aesthetic distance. Indicative is Blakey Vermeule’s point (2010, pp. ix–x) in her preface, where she shares her disconcertment when her students expressed their disapproval towards the character of David Lurie in Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999). According to Vermeule (ibid), this class had to be immediately redirected towards interpretative lucidity. There is no doubt that expressions of rage against a textual construct demonstrate a failure to understand the complexity of the human condition as so meticulously depicted by Coetzee. Still, I find that the non-­ negotiable rejection of emotional response as ‘unsophisticated’ fails to take into consideration the diversity in thought and experience of humans as readers. As Patrick Colm Hogan (2003, p. 37) underlines, “[W]e might say that any perceptual feature has a certain degree of saliency for a particular perceiver in particular circumstances…. Various qualities of the feature, the perceiver, and the context determine that degree of saliency.”

42  Character and the Reader Authorial intentions and techniques aside, a text can be interpreted in many ways, and the reader’s individual experience will affect her realisation of the text (Iser, 1971). Gordon Bower’s (1978) research on story comprehension revealed that not only does the textual meaning depend on the reader’s own interpretation, but also such interpretation is dependent on the character she chooses to identify with. There is another way to look at it: the author writes for one and the same reader, a reader that will enjoy and share her narrative experiences with others. She may be a literary scholar or a member of the public that reads to understand, or experience, or out of pure pleasure. Like writing, reading is a private activity, even when it takes place in public gatherings. As Daniel R. Schwarz (1989) illustrates, [W]riting, like speech, assumes an audience from which it (and its creator) expects a response. While the audience whom the author had in mind is different from the contemporary savvy reader—conditioned by the interpretive communities of which he is part – it is well to remember that the potential audience is whoever knows how to read. (Schwarz, 1989, p. 102) Stephen King (2000, p. 255) summarises the possible diversity of his readership in the term ‘constant reader,’ explaining that his most important goal as a writer is resonance. This is not to deny the indisputable diversity in reader choices and tastes, nor to imply that the author should attempt to satisfy all of those. Rather, the author should simply aim to comprehend the common denominators underlying the reasons and motivations behind a reader’s perusal of literary works. A closer introspection follows. 3.1.3  Reader: Constant, Implied, Universal Seymour Chatman (1978, pp. 147–150) proposed that apart from the real author of a text, there is the need for an implied one, referring to intermediate narrating agents or the narrating character. Likewise, the ‘implied’ reader refers not to the actual, flesh-and-blood reader, but rather to an always-present receiver presupposed by the text itself. Chatman (1978, p. 151) suggests that narrative communication can be represented as follows: Real author → Implied author → (Narrator) → (Narratee) → ­I mplied reader → Real reader For Iser (1974), the term ‘implied reader’ …incorporates both the prestructuring of the potential meaning by the text, and the reader’s actualization of this potential through the

Character and the Reader  43 reading process. It refers to the active nature of this process – which will vary historically from one age to another – and not to a typology of possible readers. (Iser, 1974, p. xii) Iser’s study followed the development, expansion and diversification of the role of the reader through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries by examining how the text itself is reshaped through historical and cultural changes, forming different expectations and communicational codes. In that respect, the term ‘implied’ can be applied to a reader who recognises, comprehends and responds to cultural and historical norms different to her own. Iser (ibid) also underlined the importance of consistency in reader response as well as the existence of ‘controls’ to ensure that the reader’s perception does not obscure the versatility of the text’s meaning. He argued that human experience is embedded in the text as a process of understanding, and the question is, how the reader can be guided into acquiring it. I find the following quote by Wayne Booth (1961) particularly insightful: The author creates … an image of himself, and another image of his reader; he makes his reader, as he makes his second self, and the most successful reading is one in which the created selves, author and reader, can find complete agreement. (Booth, 1961, p. 138) Such a reader may share the author’s national and socio-cultural identity, or she may interpret and respond to a text according to her own cultural, social, political and miscellaneous preconceptions (Iser, 1974), but the text itself is not interchangeable. Its consistency and comprehensiveness will appeal to the reader, and whether familiar or unfamiliar, it will still be inviting to explore. Hence, any reader at any given time has the ability to understand narratives written in previous centuries, by authors of different cultures. Indeed, if reader interest was dictated by socio-temporal restrictions, the literary establishment would be undoubtedly impoverished. Enter the concept of the ‘universal reader’ which, I suggest, refers to the experience shared among a diversity of receivers around the globe whose predispositions towards interpretations and moral explanations may vary, despite the contextual solidity of the text itself. How, then, can the same text be subject to varying realisations? A narrative needs to contain signals familiar to the reader, so that she can construct the text’s meaning based on familiar codes (Prince, 1971, pp. 119–120). The level of explanation given by the text should depend on the level of its ‘uncommonness.’ In other words, if a narrative contains ‘less ordinary situations in a less ordinary way,’ one should expect

44  Character and the Reader a higher level of explanation. It is precisely the universality of human experience that allows for the understanding of motivation and action, if enough cues are offered by the author. As Iser (1971) explained, [T]he text must offer a certain amount of latitude, as far as its realization is concerned, for different readers at different times have always had different apprehensions of such texts, even though the general impression may be the same- that the world revealed, however far back in the past it may lie, comes alive in the present. (Iser, 1971, p. 5) Reverting to Prince (1971), I suggest that ‘less ordinary’ may refer to situations (a) grasped yet not experienced by the reader, (b) altogether unfamiliar or (c) purely fantastical. An example of the first case would be Fingersmith (2002), taking place in nineteenth-century England. A contemporary reader, English or other, is still able to understand the plot as emerging from the characters’ lives, the ethos, social classifications and human weakness depicted in it. Indicative of the second case is Disgrace (1999). David Lurie cannot understand why his daughter, Lucy, refuses to seek justice for her rape in the rural remoteness of the Eastern Cape. The setting, a directly post-apartheid South Africa, dictates rules and mentalities, and Coetzee manages to convey its reality, which may be hard to understand, let alone accept, for many readers. An example of the third category is the dystopian Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret ­Atwood. Set in the totalitarian regime of a dystopian world, the novel follows a chapter in the life of a woman who, having been separated from her child and partner for the sole purpose of becoming a reproductive vessel, is trying to survive. Much like 1984 (Orwell, 2004), the novel’s political and historical references are familiar to any reader around the world with respective awareness. Even though one may come up with a range of differences within those variations, there is a common denominator unifying all three of them: they evolve around human experience, and being human is a universal notion (Hogan, 2003). Indeed, most narratives involve fictional ­human-like models moving through time and space (Lodge, 2002, p. 14). At the same time, Schwarz (1989) argues that Characters must be understood in terms of the historical situation which gave rise to them, the historical situation within the imagined world, as well as the historical situation of the contemporary audience, and we must acknowledge that this latter situation is different for each reader. (Schwarz, 1989, p. 98) The author is thus called to create an illusion of familiarity through consistency, and the reader has to follow her cues to be able to

Character and the Reader  45 experience the narrative. As Iser (1974, pp. 83–84) suggested, these codes need to form a ‘neutral ground’ between the novel’s, for example, chronological context and the reader’s present reality, rendering the narrative comprehensive enough to be followed. And as Hogan (2003) asserts, that there are far more commonalities among human stories in worldwide literature, than the variances that have so far been explored in the study of literary works. As he explains, what unites all narratives and attributes them their universality is that they focus on human emotion. Equally, Egri (1965, p. 27) emphasised the importance of human emotion as a prerequisite for universality, “linking man to man all over the globe.” Disgrace is built on that concept, its implications emerging clearly for the reader to grasp. The ideological, socio-cultural and temporal dynamics triggering shame may vary as per one’s ethnicity, religion, educational status and so on. Yet the feeling itself is one and the same. The reader doesn’t have to adopt the character’s ideological framework in order for the imaginary possibilities of the text to become valid or acceptable (Chatman, 1978, p. 150). Stephen J. Quigley (2009), an American author who moved to Cambodia to study and teach, observed that Empirical knowledge is that which someone experiences and is believed to be true, but second-hand [sic] empirical knowledge usually comes in the form of words, sounds, and images. For example, we as audience members watching television may see a snake wiggle or hear the sound of a snake coming from the speakers on our television, but not know the way a snake feels in the hand or what it smells like. Just as a snake must be translated, in writing a setting must also be translated from one culture or region to the next, especially when a reader living at antipodes has not had exposure to the place being written about. (Quigley, 2009, p. 93) So why then will the universal reader agree to surrender her sense of reality to temporarily enter someone else’s consciousness? And what is it that draws her to a constructed personality that does not exist outside the one-dimensional space of the text? These are the questions I wish to address next.

3.2  Why Do Readers Read? If we were to compile a list of possible reading motivations, we would also have to create a map of socio-ethnic characteristics, pasts, backgrounds and wishes. Put differently, I believe that the reasons we all read are closely linked to our personal identities. In this chapter, I would like to suggest that the universal reader as defined in the previous section

46  Character and the Reader reads in order to experience lives and situations different from her own, with a perspective to both escape her own reality and enrich her knowledge of human nature, achieving a more encompassing understanding of herself and her surrounding world. This proposition does not certainly exclude other motives nor do I intend to overshadow reading as an academic endeavour. Primarily, I speak as a fiction writer to other writers who are interested to explore the concept of their wide or possible readership further. The reader seeks stories about the ‘human condition’ not only because she is curious and inherently investigative towards her own nature but also out of interest or the need to access imaginary experiences impossible in her everyday reality. Still, there are scholars that resist the idea of reading for the character or emotional gratification, dismissing it as ‘unsophisticated’ or ‘naïve.’ The misapprehension of what the novelist refers to when she speaks of her characters ‘as if they were real,’ which is often perceived as a hyperbole, ‘offline reasoning’ or a “cliché that is passed unquestioningly among writers (Vermeule, 2010), is quite indicative of why a theory of creative writing, based on creative processes and the act of writing itself rather than post-event analysis, is imperative, both as a standalone perspective and in order to merge with literary theory so that the two disciplines can make the most of each other. In Disgrace (1999, p. 189), the following passage describing Lurie’s struggle with inspiration is worth quoting: “Sometimes he fears that the characters in the story, who for more than a year have been his ghostly companions, are beginning to fade away.” Lisa Zunshine (2006) explores the relationship between fiction-­ reading and human communication. She (ibid, pp. 4–6) suggests that fiction enhances our mind-reading capacity, in other words our ability to ascribe mental states to a person according to observable actions. The reader uses her knowledge of the real world, acquired through her interactions with others, in order to make sense of the fictional one, which, in its turn, enriches her experiences, guiding her towards a better comprehension of different circumstances and idiosyncrasies of real people. For George Poulet (2001), reading entails a mutual surrender of one’s existence to the other, for the reader finds herself inside the book, and the book inside her. As he illustrated, I am on loan to another continued, and this other feels, suffers, and acts within me…. When I am absorbed in reading, a second self takes over, a self which thinks and feels for me…. At this moment what matters to me is to live, from the inside, in a certain identity with the work and the work alone. It could hardly be otherwise. (Poulet, 2001, pp. 1323–1324)

Character and the Reader  47 This second self that Poulet refers to represents the reader’s conscious and subconscious activity when she engages in interpretations of Theory of Mind. As Zunshine (2006) remarks: [O]ur tendency to interpret observed behaviour in terms of underlying mental states … seems to be so effortless and automatic (in a sense that we are not even conscious of engaging in any particular act of “interpretation”) because our evolved cognitive architecture “prods” us toward learning and practicing mind-reading daily, from the beginning of awareness. (Zunshine, 2006, p. 6) It is the ability to make meaning of people’s actions in real life that allows for the perception of consistency in the behaviour and attitudes of fictional characters (Bower, 1978; Palmer, 2002). In that respect, separating characters from their contextual representations by implying they should not be seen as ‘real people’ renders comprehension impossible. They become mere textual summaries, deprived of unity, purpose and thus, coherence. As Schwarz (1989) points out, [W]hen we respond to fictional characters, we think of the personality of the characters … their anxieties, frustrations, and obsessions, and the quality of the individual’s moral strength and reputation. In one sense, when we speak of a person’s character, we mean the quality of a person, his text as we perceive it. (…) It is well to remember that because this qualitative issue – what kind of character does a person have? – is part of our response to our aesthetic and life experience, we cannot speak of character as if it were only a formal element in fiction. (Schwarz, 1989, p. 92) Indeed, rejecting the ‘reality’ of the fictional character is ignoring the metaphorical usage of the term, stating instead the obvious fact that she is not to be perceived as an actual physical entity – as if it was ever implied that this is so. Speculating what a character did or would do after the story ends is not indicative of some sort of delusional fixation but rather demonstrative of how vividly the author portrayed her characters and how their less than ordinary circumstances are convincing enough to be ordinary in other cultures, times and terms. The engagement into an activity of such fictive speculation is consciously voluntary, and one can shake off its illusiveness instantly (Smith, 1995; Zunshine, 2006). On the other hand, Zunshine (2006, p. 13) warns that we must be suspicious of any ‘effortless’ mind-reading when it comes to literary characters. Reading a novel is different from interaction in everyday life

48  Character and the Reader in many respects, most important being the lack of immediacy present with real people. The author will always be the intermediary between reader and character. When one interacts with a real person, she has immediate access to all visible and aural clues – speech, mannerisms, body language and so on. On the other hand, the portrait of the character as a fictional entity is painted by the author, who has to offer clues and signals to be decoded by the reader. It is such cues that guide her towards a spectrum of interpretations, and lead her to exclude others (Zunshine, 2006, p. 14). In summary, the juxtaposition between character and the real person requires the awareness that any deductions are guided and defined by the author; whereas her communication with a flesh-and-blood individual relies on the signals of the person in question and her interpretations of them, without anyone standing in between. Therefore, the use of the term ‘real’ when referring to a fictional character should not be taken literally, except in certain cases – for instance, the depiction of real people through fictionalised biographies or historical fiction. For Schwarz (1989, p. 98), our response to a character is mimetic, metaphorical and aesthetic. As he points out, the relationship between character (the virtual representation on paper) and characterisation (her textual manifestation) is a constantly changing, multidimensional, dynamic one. I propose that it is also interdependent because it is impossible to conceive the fictional character without her linguistic structure, yet such semiotic elements fade upon the convincing depiction of a human portrait. Fiction offers the reader the prerogative to be inside two minds ­simultaneously – her own, and that of the narrator/character. Poulet’s second self surrenders to the hypothetical awareness of the fictional character, while the first stays alert to interpret, dismiss or voluntarily immerse deeper. These two selves occupying the reader’s consciousness co-­operate to offer her a second-level experience through the fictional world – or, as Oatley (2003, p. 165) remarks, a relived experience in the form of a dream as a mental construction. The reader follows the character and her thoughts, often sharing her feelings, yet remains alert to dismiss anything incompatible to her sense of coherence. In that respect, she is never entirely inside the character’s mind, nor is she unequivocally alert to its non-existence. Her preconceptions affect her reading and the text itself reshapes and sometimes altogether alters them (Harding, 1962; Iser, 1972; Zunshine, 2006). Therefore, the reading experience does entail an empirical dimension since the reader’s potentially altered preconceptions can influence her stances and behavioural patterns in the world. To quote Zunshine (2006, p. 18) again, “It is possible […] that certain cultural artefacts, such as novels, test the functioning of our cognitive adaptations for mind-reading while keeping us pleasantly aware that the ‘test’ is proceeding quite smoothly.”

Character and the Reader  49 Abraham Stahl (1975, pp. 112–119) presents twelve possible impacts of literature, including “[W]idening of interests, relative increase in mediated experience, fiction affecting the perception of reality, fusion of literary and actual experience, inside knowledge of others, seeing oneself from the outside, increase in self-consciousness and loss of spontaneity, literary characters as models for the planning of life, and formation of independent judgement”. A number of other scholars and writers share similar views: Henry James (2001, p. 864) believed that what motivates people to read is life itself; for the reader, literature is another experience of what he can relate to. Iser (1972, p. 286) notes that the pattern of acquiring experience in real life is not dissimilar to that of navigating oneself through fictional paths, guiding the reader to comprehend aspects of her reality. And D.W. Harding (1962, p. 136) explained, detached observation can sometimes save us from the trap of biased, subjective interpretations. All in all, whether a reader seeks pleasure or intellectual and emotional stimulation through reading, an anthropocentric narrative will enrich her real-life experience by involving her in hypothetical scenarios. She consequently applies her newly acquired deductions to situations in her real life, which, in turn, will be encompassed in her prospective literary endeavours (Smith, 1995). My next goal is to establish how such experience is gained through the reader’s inherent curiosity and interest in human nature. As I plan to argue, it is the intellectual or emotive alignment with the character that renders such acquisition possible.

3.3  Reader and Emotional Response There have been many discussions as to whether the fictional character should be regarded as a psychological construct. In fact, this is where the famous debate between structuralists and realists, or else the supporters of either the thematic or the mimetic function of character, is based on (Phelan, 1987; Rimmon-Kenan, 1983). The former reduces character to a mere textual summary of symbols (Barthes, 1990; Culler, 1983; Todorov, 1977); the latter insist upon her psychological dimension, even if merely textual (James, 2001; Schwarz, 1989; Smith, 1995). Again, the schism derives from the misapprehension of the notion that the character is made in the image of real people. There’s no doubt that the character only comes alive through an accumulation of linguistic signs, assembled to form personality attributes, which, in their turn, lead to actions. Consistency links personal traits to motives and actions, resulting in reader alignment. Assuming that the concept of character entails psychological

50  Character and the Reader attributes simply serves to help connect the dots, understanding the text. It is a consequence of reading, rather than a prerequisite. As for the thematic versus the mimetic parameter of the debate, it is worth wondering why the two functions are regarded as mutually exclusive. Characters need not be used as mere tools for the emergence of thematic ideas, yet their fictional uniqueness cannot presuppose that they are not representatives of their cultures, historical eras or textual geographical origins. They should be neither two-dimensional stereotypes, nor inconsistent to their pre-structured nature. In order to create a unifying theory of the two poles of the axis, Phelan (1987, pp. 284–285) suggests that the character’s nature is neither solely mimetic nor thematic, but rather synthetic, entailing both the representational and the didactic functions. Indeed, a person’s existence in society as an individual does not collide with the idea that she remains representative of socio-cultural norms. Likewise, if we accept that the fictional character is the simulation of a human being (Oatley, 1994), her fictional personality and her thematic function shouldn’t be seen as mutually exclusive. A respective misapprehension of the term ‘real’ lies within the refusal to acknowledge emotional response to characters as an integral part of the reader-response process. Treating emotional involvement as a process separate to cognitive and aesthetic response is both essentially and epistemologically problematic. As Harper (2010, p. 70) highlights, “[W]hile it might be true that works of Creative Writing can induce emotional states it is neither a challenge to certain works having aesthetic appeal nor confirmation that they do.” Indeed, emotive response is part of a human’s cognitive functions. In particular, empathy is instigated by memory, the ability to endorse another’s point of view and one’s own empirical deductions (Keen, 2006). As Suzanne Keen (2006, p. 213) notes, “[N]arrative empathy invoked by reading must involve cognition, for reading itself relies upon complex cognitive operations.” And she expands: In its strongest forms, aesthetics’ empathy describes a projective fusing with an object – which may be another person or an animal, but may also be a fictional character made of words, or even, in some accounts, inanimate things such as landscapes, artworks, or geological features. The acts of imagination and projection involved in such empathy certainly deserve the label cognitive, but the sensations, however strange, deserve to be registered as feelings. Thus I do not quarantine narrative empathy in the zone of either affect or cognition: as a process, it involves both. When texts invite readers to feel, they also stimulate readers’ thinking. (Keen, 2006, p. 213)

Character and the Reader  51 Mar et al. (2011, p. 822) suggest that the emotions arising from the perusal of a literary text can be either aesthetic, should the reader wish to maintain a certain distance to the text; or narrative, if she chooses to emerge into the fictional world. Both categories can merge, with the former modifying the latter, thus contributing to a wider sense of reading satisfaction. 3.3.1  Identification and Empathy Precisely because they reject reader emotional response as unsophisticated, many scholars equally dismiss the concept of reader identification and empathy. For example, for Harding (1962, p. 141), ‘identification’ is “[A] good deal of pseudo-psychologizing that sees the process of novel-­ reading as one of identification and vicarious experience.” He moves on to suggest that identification is best segmented into more specific terms, such as empathy, imitation, admiration and so on, for clarity’s sake. Harding’s polemic towards ‘identification,’ which he will later on refer to and compare with pathological exaggerations, such as delusion of identity (1962, p. 141), is indicative of how the term and its purposes tend to be overanalysed. As Iser (1972) explicated, Often the term “identification” is used as it were an explanation, whereas in actual fact it is nothing more than a description. What is normally meant by “identification” is the establishment of affinities between oneself and someone outside oneself – a familiar ground on which we are able to experience the unfamiliar. The author’s aim, though, is to convey the experience, and, above all, an attitude towards that experience. Consequently, “identification” is not an end in itself, but a stratagem by means of which the author stimulates attitudes in the reader. (Iser, 1972, p. 296) We could argue that, be that as it may, ‘identification’ remains a vague term and that a closer inspection of the interactions between reader and fictional character would help define them more accurately. Another of the arguments Harding (1962, p. 145) raises against the use of the term is that it presupposes a closer mental connection between reader and character than the one that actually exists. As he contests, even in the most empathetic of insights, a person cannot possibly experience the exact same feeling of another. Hogan (2003) examines the Indian literary theory of poetics, initiated over two millennia ago. He (2003, p. 47) analyses the distinction between two different linguistic terms, ‘rasa’ and ‘bhava,’ usually translated as ‘sentiment’ and ‘emotion,’ respectively. As he explains, ‘bhava’ refers to what a person feels in real life, while ‘rasa’ signifies what she

52  Character and the Reader experiences through art. As he (ibid) comments, “[W]hen I watch a romantic play, I do not actually love the hero or heroine (as I love my wife), but I do experience some sort of feeling.” Similarly, Keen (2006, p. 209) presents the German term Einfuhlung, referring to “[T]he process of ‘feeling one’s way into’ an art object or another person.” In both the Sanskrit and the German literary traditions therefore, one can find specific locutions pertaining to the process of sentiment evocation through the narrative. Hence, a reader’s disapproval of David Lurie’s actions – his imposition on Melanie Isaacs and his subsequent contempt of the committee – is not an ‘overemotional’ reaction but an inseparable part of the reading act. Respectively, emotions may arise from Lucy Lurie’s rape in Disgrace (1999); the interchange of betrayals between Sue and Maud and Mrs Sucksby in Fingersmith (2002); Mike Williams’s death in The Ice Storm (1994); and the abusive relationship between Ryan and Tony, and Georgie’s troubles in The Glorious Heresies (2016). It is not the delusion of a first-hand experience that stirs them, but the empathy arising from the second-hand experience as occurring through Poulet’s surrender of the second self. I thus propose that ‘identification’ encompasses multiple aspects of reader-response to character, despite the fact that the emotive part of the process can be further analysed as to how the individual reader may position herself towards each character. Murray Smith (1995, p. 2) defines identification as the reader’s attachment to a particular character who possesses similar personality traits, or ones she wished she possessed, guiding her thus to undergo the same emotional experiences. For Smith (ibid, p. 3), the usage of the term is founded on a perception-and-response dynamic, and he proposes the dissection of ‘identification’ into three different levels of engagement: recognition, alignment and allegiance. Recognition (1995, pp. 82–86) refers to the reader using all the textual cues at her disposal to construct an identifiable, distinct fictional person, by accumulating her linguistic, physical and idiosyncratic traits collectively. Alignment pertains to the access a reader is granted into the character’s thoughts, emotions and actions. And allegiance concerns her decision to adopt either a sympathetic or an unfavourable stance towards the character based on moral evaluation and possible socio-­ cultural or other similarities or differences. Harding (1962, p. 134) presents us with a similar process: the character must draw the reader’s attention in order for the latter to evaluate her, thus adopting a favourable or non-favourable stance of varying degrees. The continuity and sequential relationship defining Smith’s distinction is indicative of how cognition and emotion in reading are causally interrelated. Examining his schema vice versa, we can observe how each of his levels cannot exist without the previous one. Starting from allegiance, it is impossible for any feelings of empathy or antipathy to

Character and the Reader  53 emerge without a prior knowledge of the receptors’ basic circumstances. Empathy, sympathy and antipathy are all consequential, deriving from the acknowledgement of existing qualities or arising situations. It is a prerequisite that the reader understands the character before determining their intellectual and emotional attitudes towards her. For example, The Ice Storm (1994) begins with the presentation of Ben Hood’s infidelity. As Moody moves deep into his character, plot, values and causations are clarified in their complexity, determining the reader’s stance along the way. Similarly, in Fingersmith (2002), any evaluations toward Sue or Maud are developed as their fictional paths progress. This is the stage of alignment, which cannot be evoked without a point of reference towards the object (in this instance, the character) it pertains to. Even when characters are interpreted as symbols of thematic unities, they remain an accumulation of certain traits that are represented by the presence of a textual ‘physical’ body and a proper name that signifies them. It is this accumulation of textual signs that constructs the virtual existence of the character the reader is called to identify with as a distinct personality bearing a certain proper name, and thus follow her perspective – or not. Returning to ‘identification,’ Keen (2006) makes a distinction between ‘empathy’ and ‘sympathy.’ As she remarks (2006, p. 208), “In empathy, sometimes described as an emotion in its own right, we feel what we believe to be the emotions of others…. Empathy is distinguished in both psychology and philosophy (though not in popular usage) from sympathy, in which feelings for another occur”. In Mar et al.’s study (2011, pp. 822–827), the authors propose a taxonomy of emotional responses that classifies ‘identification’ as a separate level of response rather than a general term encompassing finer and more detailed emotions such as empathy, sympathy, etc.: In sympathy, we feel bad for a character whose goals are not being met, but we do not need to model these goals on our planning processor in order to do so. In identification, we take on these goals and plans as our own, and see ourselves as the character feeling what he or she feels. In empathy, we understand a character’s goals through our model of his or her mind, and feel something similar to what the character feels, but we do not see ourselves as that character and identify these emotions as our own rather than as the character’s. (Mar et al., 2011, p. 824) Identification can thus be regarded as a process according to which the reader temporarily leaves her own consciousness and surrenders her ‘second self’ to the character’s textual frame of mind. She voluntarily enters her fictional perspective and sees through her eyes, ‘experiencing’

54  Character and the Reader the emotions of another. Therefore, the term encompasses functions of imagination, empathetic response, individual perception of the world and its fictional depictions, and even memories of the reader’s past. Oatley (2009, p. 27) considers identification to be “the literary term for empathy” and describes it as follows: We insert the goals of a protagonist into our planning processor, and as vicissitudes are encountered, we experience emotions in relation to them. We do not feel the emotions of the protagonist, we feel our own emotions, empathetically in the context of plans with which we identify and their consequences. (Oatley, 2009, p. 27) Oatley (2009, p. 211) regards empathy as a two-stage process. Initially, the reader understands the character’s emotions and their sources by following the cues in the text. At the same time, having permitted her ‘second self’ to adopt the character’s goals and intentions, she experiences the emotions as triggered by the character’s fate. A reader’s past memories may also trigger identification with a particular character. Mar et al. (2011, pp. 824–825) call this process ‘relived emotions,’ entailing the recollection of our own experiences as evoked by the narrative. It is empirical knowledge that places the reader in the character’s fictional shoes. Respectively, the reader may develop feelings of strong negative emotions towards the antagonist or any other character that is either responsible for the protagonist’s misfortune, or stands as an obstacle to her happiness. Since empathy is to be regarded as a prerequisite to reader identification, relived emotions can be viewed as a possible stage towards it. I’m saying ‘possible’ because, even though readers may be inclined to identify with characters with whom they share certain idiosyncratic attributes, such similarities may influence the identification process but are not a prerequisite to it. Since the first step towards an empathetic response is for the reader to place herself in the character’s imaginary shoes (Oatley, 2009), the only essential requirement is for the character’s personality, goals, motivations and actions to be consistent and presented convincingly. Once again, Smith’s engagement schema comes into effect. As soon as the reader is sufficiently acquainted with the character, emotional proximity or distancing becomes possible. This is why identification and its suggested variations are possible in historical or non-realistic genres. A white heterosexual male reader should be able to identify with Waters’ Maud Lilly (2002), Moody’s Wendy Hood (1998) or Coetzee’s Lucy Lurie (1999). In The Course of Love (2017), male readers may choose to align with Kirsty, while female readers sympathise with Rabih. And The Glorious Heresies’ (2016) cast consists of a group of social outcasts whose conflicts and troubles can touch any given member of contemporary society. Empathy is an

Character and the Reader  55 inherently manifesting human emotion, instigated under specific conditions (Oatley, 2010). The novelist’s purpose is to present the reader with such conditions, not by focussing on the isolated goals serving a stratagem but rather as emerging consistent outcomes of the creative process. In conclusion, the term ‘identification’ is meant to describe the reader’s alignment with the fictional character as it encompasses a variety of interchangeable emotions, which succeed each other as per the character’s idiosyncratic changes, the situations arising from the narrative and the reader’s perception and own experiences. 3.3.2  Emotional Response and Character Complexity Earlier, I mentioned Vermeule’s (2010) view that the emotional response towards a character like Lurie obscures the more complicated themes behind Coetzee’s narrative. Let me begin by stating that such verisimilar complexity that allows the reader to explore deeper existential themes than the one-dimensional poles of a caricature. It is indisputable that the simplification of such a complicated portrait does all but justice to Coetzee’s narrative. In that respect, Vermeule is, of course, quite right. Yet it is unreasonable to dictate a separation between the emotive and the aesthetic as the ultimate prerequisite for such complexity to be appreciated; especially if we take into consideration that reader response can be defined by different factors, both perceptual and emotive, or a combination of both such as in the case of relived memories. Different readers may demonstrate diverse emotional reactions towards a character. Oatley (2010) has presented the results of a study that aimed to relate particular goals with emotion evocation, by asking a group of people to read a short story, and proceeding to examine their emerging emotions. The findings suggested that emotions have ‘directional effects’: Anger propels one to think forward from the current event (from the wrong that was done) towards what to do about it. Sadness prompts one to think backwards (from the loss) to analyze how it came about. Of course the emotion did not tell subjects what to think: that was up to them. (Oatley, 2010, p. 31) The conclusions illustrated the diversity of reader response to the character and her actions. In Disgrace (1999), both anger and sadness as possible sentiments towards Lurie may surface from the reader’s predispositions, defining her attitude towards him. Such an attitude may be reinforced, reshaped or altogether altered as the narrative unfolds, and so will emotions. For instance, an initial wave of anger may gradually become pity, sadness or even an expectation for redemption. Emotions don’t have to be intense or overwhelming, or to reflect platitude; rather, they are part of the cognitive process of grasping the text in its entire context.

56  Character and the Reader Furthermore, there is no sufficient evidence to substantiate the claim that sophisticated readers will consciously avoid emotional response. Dictating reading patterns that exclude emotional response as disciplinary fallacy, and distinguishing the emotive from the aesthetic as two different, even contradictory processes will only serve to augment the gap between the theory and practice of writing and reading. Even if one accepts that uncritical emotional responses to fictional characters indicate a lack of proper comprehension of the characters in question, it would still be worth exploring the dynamics that guide them. For Poulet (2001, p. 1328) extreme proximity or alienation from the text entailed dangers: completely losing one’s own consciousness within the narrative; and the possibility of distancing oneself to such a degree that excludes all alignment with it. He commented: Extreme closeness and extreme detachment have then the same regrettable effect of making me fall short of the total critical act: that is to say, the exploration of that mysterious interrelationship which, through the mediation of reading and of language, is established to our mutual satisfaction between the work read and myself. (Poulet, 2001, p. 1328) Moreover, it is unsubstantiated to assume that every single reader aspires to achieve pure intellectual stimulation through reading. Recent studies (Mar et al., 2011) even suggest that that the reader’s mood and emotional state may in fact influence the choice of narrative she will go for, rather than simply emerge during the actual reading process. Mar et al. (2011, p. 819) propose that the pre-existing range of emotions affects the very reading of the text in terms of engagement, and continues to influence the reader even afterwards. The authors summarise as follows: One’s choice of fiction is a product of many things related to emotion, including: (1) current emotional state or mood. (2) an appraisal of what emotions will result from reading a particular text; and (3) personal goals with respect to felt emotion. (Mar et al., 2011, p. 819) The paper (2011, p. 822) proposes that emotional involvement is a reader’s primary intention and that emotions play an integral part in the overall reading experience. Bower’s (1978) research additionally indicates that mood constitutes an impacting factor on the choice of character with whom the reader will identify. In that respect, emotion functions as a prerequisite to reading rather than a consequence. Taking into consideration that emotions are inherent and not consciously triggered and maintained (Oatley, 2010), the study supports the idea that separating emotional from critical response to a narrative and its agents is not just unnecessary, but actually impossible. Oatley (2009, p. 26) also

Character and the Reader  57 explains how emotions, plans and intentions are interrelated, referring to the structure of a narrative as a good example of how ‘unfolding’ works – where ‘unfolding’ is a sequential bidirectional process according to which one’s emotions affects those of another, whose emotions influence in reciprocation, and so on. Furthermore, rejecting any type or degree of emotional involvement with a fictional character is equal to overlooking significant aspects of the reading process and its consequence in both a social and academic level. A recent study (Djikic et al., 2009, p. 25) has suggested that the reading of fiction, as a process that entails identification and self-­implication, can initiate personal change, as well as “cognitive and emotional re-­ schematization.” The conclusions (ibid, p. 27) demonstrate “significant changes in self-reported experience of traits under laboratory conditions.” Arguably, we cannot assume that every reader is equally, or even at all, affected by literature to the extent that she undergoes internal changes. Yet in another study (2009), Mar et al. have attempted to rule out individual differences in the examination of such influences. The authors aimed to illustrate that reading fiction as a process enhancing social skills does not necessarily rely on personality traits, and that it is the very activity itself that promotes understanding of others and empathetic responses in the real world. Their methods included the measurement of personality by the use of the Big Five Inventory (gender, age, English fluency, trait Openness and trait Fantasy), as well as parameters such as social isolation and loneliness (2009, pp. 412–413). As they concluded, [F]iction print-exposure predicts performance on an empathy task, even after gender, age, English fluency, trait Openness, and trait Fantasy are statistically controlled. This finding helps to rule out the possibility that mere individual differences are responsible for the observed association between fiction exposure and empathy. (2009, pp. 420–421) The same team (2006) had previously examined the association between reading fiction and social ability: [C]omprehending characters in a narrative fiction appears to parallel the comprehension of peers in the actual world, while the comprehension of non-fiction shares no such parallels. Frequent fiction readers may thus bolster or maintain their social abilities unlike frequent readers of non-fiction. (Mar et al., 2006, p. 695) The study proposed that fiction promotes imaginary thinking and that narratives aid the reader to comprehend the real world better, enhancing social abilities and improving interactions with real people. The authors also underlined the correlation between narrative and reality, and how

58  Character and the Reader fiction can influence beliefs and attitudes in real environments (2006, pp. 696–697). I will close this section by quoting Horace (2001): It is not enough for poetry to be beautiful; it must also be pleasing and lead the hearer’s mind wherever it will. [101] The human face smiles in sympathy with smilers and comes to the help of those that weep. If you want me to cry, mourn first yourself; then your misfortunes will hurt me…. For nature first shapes us within for any state of fortune – gives us pleasure or drives us to anger or casts us down to the ground with grievous sorrow and pains us – [111] and then expresses the emotions through the medium of the tongue. (Horace, 2001, p. 126) If we agree that emotion is an inseparable part and act of cognition, we need not be afraid of its manifestation in what is perceived as a ‘scholarly’ activity. Arguably, the distance we maintain between us and the hypothetical being is reflective of our critical judgment. On the other hand, though, our voluntary surrendering of Poulet’s (2001) second self cannot be viewed as mutually exclusive. Should our allegiance with a character be defined by a series of emotional reactions which pertain more to our own experiences and perceptions of the world rather than by an overwhelming, false belief that the suffering of the character in question is real, then our understanding of fiction is not just intellectually stimulating – it is also empirical.

3.4  Summary of Conclusions An active participant in the text’s recreation, the reader can be any person of any social status, education and origin, choosing to read for a variety of reasons. The novelist’s task is to make her work as comprehensive and congruent as she can. The act of reading encompasses an interchange of intellectual stimuli and emotional responses, both of equal gravity. The author should ascertain that her characters are complex enough to carry such emotions through in a way consistent with their idiosyncratic patterns and fictional endeavours. Such evocation of reader emotion should not be used as a self-ended stratagem, but rather emerge as a natural consequence from the narrative itself. Respective analysis will follow later. But first, a closer examination of the ‘real’ in relation to fictional characters and worlds is required, in order to define those interrelationships that govern the liaison between narrative and real spatio-temporal environments. Any analogies drawn or dismissed by such an examination will aid towards a better understanding of the fictional character’s nature, function, raison d’être and the concept’s dynamics of creation.

4 A Reference for Fiction

4.1  Is Fiction Inspired by Reality? Whether a novelist attempts to faithfully copy, or altogether abstain from her perceived reality depends on her own interpretations alone; one writer’s intentional exaggeration of what she thinks of as common and ordinary can be someone else’s original, unaffected attribution of them. For the purposes of this book, I propose that Reality is the attribution of an individual’s meaning of the world, based on her perceptions, ideologies, tastes, and miscellaneous opinions. 4.1.1  Reality and Fiction: Possible Correlations The issue of whether fiction imitates reality has been discussed widely, and it should come as no surprise that a unified conceptual framework is yet to be produced. On one side stand the formalists, who believe that it is futile to speak of any such connection; on the other are the advocates of realism, who view the novel as a reflection of reality (Rimmon-Kenan, 1983). For many authors, modern literature is essentially assessed by its correspondence to credibility through the experience the narrative will offer the reader (Mills, 2006, p. 30). Another view is that writing itself is a form of research, and that fiction and reality exist in constant interaction (Boulter, 2007, p. 27). Also, that the relevance to the real world is inescapable for all kinds of fiction, the primary purpose of which is to show us how the world works, despite the universal diversity in moral codes (Gardner, 2001, p. 79). On the opposite side stand the scholars who dismiss any correlation of fiction to reality and argue instead that creative writing is a purely symbolic act. Disputing those critics who reduce literature to pure symbolism, Ursula Brumm (1968) regards fiction as: [A] representation of life, but not a symbolic representation…. It is realistic, not because it set out to produce an absolutely faithful re-creation of reality, but because it holds that only what actually

60  A Reference for Fiction is can furnish trustworthy data concerning our destiny as human beings…. The realistic novel … is concerned with the individual and idiosyncratic, that is, the particular in its particular circumstances, with reality as experienced by the individual as constituting the only genuine version of reality. (Brumm, 1968, pp. 368–369) I consider the dissension between the defenders and the enemies of the imitation theory futile, and the novelist should disentangle herself from it altogether. The author uses a self-perceived analogy between the real world and her fictional ones as a reference and not an end in itself. With respect to this, Smith (1995, pp. 22–23) argues that commending the ‘realism’ of a work relies precisely upon the recognition that it is a construction of the object it imitates and not identical or equal to it. Walton’s (1990) distinction between ‘matching’ and ‘representing’ becomes relevant at this point: Suppose that Tom Sawyer, the character in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, has a double in the real world. There happens actually to have been a boy of that name who was and did everything Mark Twain’s novel has the fictional Tom Sawyer being and doing - a boy, in other words, whom the novel matches. Mark Twain knew nothing of the real “Tom Sawyer”; the correspondence between him and the fictional character is purely coincidental…. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is not about this actual boy. (Walton, 1990, pp. 108–109) Fiction does not exist within a realm of reality outside the senses and neither does it pretend to do so. Instead, it offers the reader new perspectives by sharing attitudes that may be crystallised in the future or could have formed in the past. It is this correlation of fiction to the past that I will explore next. 4.1.2  Fiction, Reality and History Literature offers the reader the opportunity to embark upon imaginary temporal journeys, both to the past, through works of historical fiction, as well as to the future, through those of fantasy and science fiction. History itself is represented by the chronological sequence of human existence. Historians and novelists attempt to recreate it through their texts, albeit with different methods and aims. The former recount or highlight events. The latter create fictional lives that are affected by such events. Both may write for propaganda, but they will usually strive each for their assigned objectivity: the historian to report in an unbiased manner,

A Reference for Fiction  61 free from personal prejudices and emotional involvement; the novelist by presenting the same occurrences through the diversity of her characters’ perspectives. Historical fiction is based on that very principle, founded on the factual to build on the possible. Many historical novels revolve around personages of the past, guiding the reader to follow characters through an amalgamation of both constructed and real events. For example, Napoleon appears in many novels, including Jeanette Winterson’s (1996) The Passion, Victor Hugo’s (1955) Les Misérables, etc. Sparshott (1967) writes accordingly: What is it that we are asked to imagine? Not that there was a man called Napoleon, for we know that there really was; nor that he escaped from Elba, for we know that he really did. Rather, we are asked to suppose that certain events in this well-known career took place in certain ways, although we do not know whether they in fact happened so, or otherwise, or we may even know that they happened otherwise; or to suppose, that among these known episodes, others were interspersed that we know did not in fact take place. (Sparshott, 1967, p. 4) Among the first to draw the analogy between the historian and the novelist was Aristotle (1996), who differentiated them as per their function. His distinction dictated that the latter is engaged with what has happened, while the former is concerned with what would happen under certain circumstances. For this reason, he believed that (ibid, p. 16) history is less philosophical than poetry. But even if fictional and historical events coincide, the poet remains a poet, as his work is one founded on likelihood – the ‘what if’ likelihood of things. Sir Phillip Sidney (1965, p. 111) also held the view that the historian’s role is restricted to reciting the facts for the purpose of informing, while the poet may change and ‘beautify’ them for both didactic and entertaining purposes. For Sidney (ibid, p. 113), the poet has the advantage of adding perspective to any story told, thus making the narrated events more interesting. Derek Allan (2001, pp. 145–147) dismisses the idea that history embedded in a narrative and history as an ecumenical concept are to be compared, and argues that literature – even in the case of historical fiction – focusses on the individual, whilst history functions as an all-encompassing experience. Indeed, there was never any real need for such a comparison altogether. Expanding Aristotle’s differentiation between the one that reports and the one who imagines, I propose that the novelist may use history to illuminate new insights and offer the reader perspectives and experiences set at an existent, and often ‘familiar’ (by experience or apprehension) setting. It is a correlation rather

62  A Reference for Fiction than a discrepancy between the two. The novelist may use the historian’s work as a platform for her own endeavours. Iser’s (1974) following quote highlights this point further: The imagination fills the framework of historical fact with the picture of dramatic human confrontations, and it is this which makes historical reality genuinely interesting…. The imagination releases all the circumstances that cannot be perceived in the mere historical fact, and it brings to life all the conditions that led to the formation of historical reality. Imagination and reality interact upon one another, so that in the reality of the novel, neither history nor imagination can assume a completely dominant role. (Iser, 1974, p. 95) The historian and the novelist of the same period are not in competition but work in parallel latitudes, each exploring different dimensions. When the author seeks to pen a historical novel, the work of the historian constitutes a foundation upon which the author will construct her work through research. In fact, one way to comprehend history is to regard it as a past reality, a reality of cultures, past ideological frameworks and perceptions of life. The emerging analogy is as follows: since historical fact functions as a prerequisite to the creation of historical fiction, fiction evolving around current times is founded upon its own contemporary reality; in other words, reality as one perceives it today. Equally, futuristic fiction is born out of hypotheses (what if?) on the future, based on the human experience of the past and the present. Equally, Iser’s (1974, p. 100) principle of the imitatio historiae pertains to history coming alive in the present, by the translation of factual reality into fictional characters and scenes for the sake of individual understanding. I will explore this concept in the following section with regard to the fictional character’s role within the fictional narrative. 4.1.3  Character as the Narrator of History Iser’s centralisation of the fictional character serves as the dominant vehicle for transferring the reader through the passage of time. For Forster (1974, pp. 55–56) the difference between the historian and the novelist lies within the character’s key-role as the navigator through temporal journeys. The character’s inner life that will emerge through the narrative will give meaning to the actions with which the historian is concerned. By using a variety of fictional perspectives, the novelist may transform the recounted event into a personal journey, turning it into an imaginary subjective experience. The same events will carry different impacts onto the lives of different characters, altering and reshaping them, offering

A Reference for Fiction  63 the reader various, and often conflicting, insights. And so, the reader benefits by gaining not just knowledge, but also experience through history. In such a process, Price (1983, p. 20) believes that “[T]he narrative process may become more crucial than in history, less guided by expository suggestion and explicit assertion of pattern.” It can be concluded that the analogy between historical reality and fiction supports the argument that the novelist has to found her work on reality, the way she perceives and defines it. Reality, however, is not a temporal term; rather, it cannot be secluded within a specific timeframe. It is infinite. One’s contemporary reality will be the historical reality of both a historian and a novelist one day, and they will attempt to recite it through their own ways and methods.

4.2  A Dissension of Terminology When scholars discuss fiction’s reference to reality, they use terms such as ‘imitation’ (Aristotle, 1996; Ricoeur, 1991; Sidney, 1965), ‘representation’ (Currie, 2010; Ouellet, 1996; Walton, 1990), ‘simulation’ (Mar et al., 2008; Oatley, 1994, 1999), or speak of ‘modification’ (Sparshott, 1967; Zola, 1959), ‘recreation’ (Ricoeur, 1991), ‘mirror-like reflection’ (Boulter, 2007; Oatley, 1999; Ouellet, 1996) and so forth. I argue that the point of focus should lie on the contextual denominator of all those terms, rather than their individual meaning. The fictional text bears some similarity to reality, the degree of which is left to be determined either by the author’s conscious choice (i.e. genre) or the reader (i.e. believability as emerging from the narrative itself). Thus, I propose that fiction is inspired by reality. Aristotle (1996) regarded all forms of fictional compositions as imitations of agents and actions. Imitation constitutes an inherent inclination of human beings, as a form of seeking pleasure derived from the acquisition of knowledge. Fiction aims to satisfy an inherent curiosity about the surrounding world, which emerges as a natural thirst for knowledge. Aristotle’s (1996, pp. 6–7) reference to the depiction of unpleasant things – the image of a corpse for instance – is indicative. ‘Unpleasant things’ does not refer to the brutality of images similar to those found in contemporary macabre genres, such as extreme horror or torture porn; nor did the philosopher mean that the audience derives pleasure from the image itself. It is the satisfaction of curiosity as to what a dead human body looks like that brings any sense of gratification; in other words, the acquisition of knowledge. Still, it may be unclear what Aristotle refers to when he uses the word ‘imitation.’ The explanation lies within the aforementioned differentiation between the function of the poet and that of the historian. In order to understand ‘imitation,’ we must replace the question ‘did it really happen?’ with ‘could it have happened, under fictional circumstances?’ or

64  A Reference for Fiction otherwise ‘what if it had happened?’ It is the likelihood of the narrated events that encourage any mental correspondence to reality, events that would be plausible under a number of conditions. Paul Ricoeur (1991) was also interested in the possible meaning of the Aristotelian ‘mimesis’ which he interpreted as ‘creative imitation.’ Ricoeur joined ‘mimesis’ (“the imitation of action”) with ‘mythos’ (“the synthesis of incidents into one story”). He initiated his theory of the ‘triple circle of mimesis’ by segmenting the term into ‘mimesis1,’ ‘mimesis2’ and ‘mimesis3’: Word artisans, I shall say, do not produce things but just quasi-things. They invent the ‘as if’. In this median sense, the term mimesis is the emblem of that split … that opens up the world of fiction, or, to use current vocabulary, that institutes the literariness of the literary work. Aristotle ratifies this pivotal sense when he says, ‘the plot is the imitation of the action’. (Ricoeur, 1991, p. 139) Again, it is evident that the relationship between fiction and reality is not a competitive one. According to Ricoeur (1991, p. 140), fiction as the product of creative imagination is the result of an interaction consisting of three sequential stages, and its foundation lies within the author’s own understanding and experience of what ‘action’ stands for and what it signifies. As such, ‘mimesis1’ entails (a) the prior understanding of fictional elements; (b) the articulation of human action by signs, rules, norms and symbols; and (c) the understanding of narrative time. ‘Mimesis2’ pertains to the literary text itself. Here Ricoeur introduced the term ‘emplotment,’ referring to the process through which the author is able to interconnect different elements, such as characters and events, into an intelligible whole. That way, the text is rendered independent of the author’s possible intentions, the reader’s own interpretation and any socio-cultural preconceptions surrounding its creation (1991, p. 143). Ricoeur called this schema ‘the triple autonomy.’ Finally, ‘mimesis3’ concerns the procedure according to which the text, inspired by the real world, has the ability to affect and even overhaul the world of the reader. Two things emerge from Ricoeur’s theory. First, fiction is not (and should not aim to be) a replica of reality. Moreover, as he (1979, pp. 126–127) explained, fictional texts have a ‘reproductive’ reference to reality. Harvey (1965, pp. 21–22) introduced the notion of the ‘constitutive category’ to function as a common denominator among the specifics of experience, and the innate inclination towards experience itself. The four categories he discussed were ‘Time,’ ‘Identity,’ ‘Causality’ and ‘Freedom,’ which, as he argued, render fiction lifelike, as they are not dependent on socio-cultural or historical specifics. Finally, for Pierre Ouellet (1996, p. 77), it is precisely the human experience that allows for any

A Reference for Fiction  65 comparison with reality; in other words, it is the compatibility between the reader’s own experience of beings and worlds with the fictional ones that will define the success of mimesis. Whilst ‘imitation’ remains a popular term, many scholars consider it insufficient to describe the referential nature between reality and fiction. For Oatley (1994), the terms ‘imitation’ and ‘representation’ do not properly illustrate Aristotle’s notion of ‘mimesis.’ Oatley counters that the term can be better regarded as a simulative process according to which readers project themselves into the world of the narrative, acquiring social information and comprehending life in a way otherwise impossible (Mar and Oatley, 2008; Oatley, 1994, 1999). While ‘mimesis’ allows for an imitative relationship between fiction and reality, it is founded upon a greater structure of coherence, which renders a relationship between the work and its audience possible. This is why Creative Writing students are asked to replicate reality via the senses. This process entails a sensory transmission from the material experience of the real word to its virtual reconstruction in one’s mind. The dynamics of empirical sensory experience constitute the platform upon which the virtual analogy of such experience will be built. If fiction is inspired by our perceived sense of the real, the author will use her knowledge of the actual world as a platform for the creation of a fictional one. The latter will be a modification or recreation of the former. Accordingly, Sparshott (1967) indicates that the novelist creates a fictional world from scratch using a number of cues the reader is then called to supplement by means of her own perception and memory of the world: The memories appealed to are of two kinds: general knowledge of the kinds of things and persons and places and happenings that the actual world contains; and particular knowledge of actual events, etc., in the actual world. What the author does, and invites us to do, is not to imagine a world de novo, but to suppose that the actual world that we know is modified in certain specified respects. (Sparshott, 1967, p. 4) The idea of fiction being a creative reconstruction of reality is endorsed by many other scholars. For instance, Gardner (2001, p. 80) believes that the writer of fiction “[R]estates what has already been known, finding new expression for familiar truths, adapting to the age truths that may seem outmoded.” This is where Shklovsky’s concept of defamiliarisation (1925, cited in Shields, 2010, p. 12) lies: The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the story stony.

66  A Reference for Fiction Richard Kearney (2002) equates mimesis to creative recreation: Mimesis is invention in the original sense of that term: invenire means to discover and to create, that is, to disclose what is already there in the light of what is not yet (but is potentially). It is the power, in short to recreate actual worlds as possible worlds. (Kearney, 2002, p. 132) While the reference between fiction and reality is not characterised by mutual exclusivity (either or), it is there to define the consistency and plausibility of the narrated events. Furthermore, not all fiction is realistic. Many narratives are set in fantastical worlds, mythical or futuristic, founded on the novelist’s hypotheses of what may have been under certain circumstances. Finally, indeterminate as the story’s textual framework may be, the author may have those answers to questions the reader will never ask. She may not know for sure just how many children Lady Macbeth had (Knights, 1973), but still predict her own characters’ future. The novelist does not speak of things that are true in the world, but rather, of things that could have been true, but are not necessarily so. It would be highly unlikely to be able to make a copycat of reality, even in historical or biographical fiction. As Shields (2010, p. 10) explains, “The etymology of fiction is from fingere (participle fuctum) meaning “to shape, fashion, form, or mold.” Any verbal account is a fashioning and shaping of events.”

4.3  Truth in Fiction: The Significance of Consistency Scholars frequently theorise over what truth signifies for literature in comparison with reality. For instance, Lewis (1978) proposed that, instead of attempting to differentiate between a fictional and a ‘real’ truth, we simply need to assume that a phrase such as “In such and such fiction…” preludes the narrative’s sentences. For Lewis (ibid, p. 40), it is the pretence of storytelling that absolves the author from any accusation that she falsely recounts fictional events as true in order to deceive. On the other hand, Christopher New (1997, p. 423) believes that ‘the truth’ is all about attributing of a pragmatic sense to a congruous whole (the narrative) by terms of internal accordance through storytelling. To which Derek Matravers (1997, p. 423) counters that the very process of novel-reading entails imagining it’s not fiction in the first place, but rather a known, reported fact. Both Matravers and Lewis speak of conscious pretence in the same way Poulet (2001) spoke of a conscious surrender of self. The first to encapsulate this notion was S.T. Coleridge (1983) who initiated the concept of the ‘Suspension of Disbelief’: [M]y endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our

A Reference for Fiction  67 inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. (Coleridge, 1983, p. 6) In order to accept the extraordinariness of certain events and figures, the reader must find something recognisable in them, which will convince her that everything else could be plausible. Truthfulness is not a perplexing parameter for literature, although I agree with Matravers that the author needs to present a confident narration that is concise and verisimilar. Fiction is an amalgamation of universal truth and fabrication. As Lewis (1978, p. 42) stated, the act of reading fiction can be regarded as an interchange between factual and counterfactual premises, with the former acting as a basis for the believability of the latter. For Walton (1990, p. 41), truth and fiction are connected by an analogy such as belief and imagination. Walton (ibid, p. 35) parallels works of representational arts to children’s games of make-believe, proposing that there is such a thing as fictional truth; put differently, something could be true in a different, fictional world. The novelist should focus on engaging the reader in a conscious make-believe game, according to which, what she reads is fictional fact convincingly reported by the narrator. Put differently, the question is not whether fiction is entitled to its own truth, but rather, what is it that renders a narrative eligible to be compared to reality and its world to be viewed as ‘possible.’ 4.3.1  Consistency and Suspension of Disbelief As mentioned, Lewis believed that the author’s role when narrating a story is one of pretence and unwilling deception. I propose that we replace ‘pretence’ and ‘deception’ with ‘persuasion.’ The novelist’s goal is to persuade the reader that the narrated events and characters could be real. For Mole (2009, p. 497), plausibility can only be defined by reference to reality. As he explains, [O]ur sense of how things might have been is conditioned by our understanding of how they actually are, and the engagement of our sense of plausibility involves a gauging of the distance between the world portrayed and the actual world. (Mole, 2009, p. 497) As it emerges, juxtaposition with reality becomes inevitable to a certain, albeit indeterminable degree. In order to convince her readers, the author needs to appeal to their experience of the diverse. I say ‘indeterminable’ since reality itself is a concept subjectively experienced, and the personal interpretations are dependent on such perceptions (Currie, 1990).

68  A Reference for Fiction It is thus worth exploring how the author can convince the reader of the plausibility of her narrative, her fiction ranging from realistic to fantastical. I propose that suspension of disbelief can only be accomplished by contextual consistency and narrative coherence. Michael Lebowitz (1984) explains: A story is consistent if properties and events of the story world (including properties of characters) do not include any explicit or apparent internal contradictions…. Coherence involves the idea that events should be logically explainable, at least in retrospect, from the information available to the reader…. While it is neither necessary nor desirable to provide the reader with enough information to actively predict every event that will occur in a story, events should make sense when they do occur. (Lebowitz, 1984, p. 177) Returning to Smith’s (1990) theory of the three levels of engagement, recognition comes as the first of three sequential steps, as the prerequisite to cognitive involvement with the fictional agents. I propose that recognition can serve as the keystone to further immersion in the narrative world in its entirety. As discussed, recognition is all about accumulating textual cues in order to follow the storyline and its primary elements (Smith, 1990). An undefined amount of such cues have to correspond to reality in certain ways in order for the story to make sense. It is not the narrated fact itself that may be disputed, but its likelihood in connection to the rest of the narrative (Sparshott, 1967, p. 4). The reader must make sense of the narrated events to comprehend the story’s dynamics and recognise motives, actions, consequences and so on, in order to both understand and assess the narrative. Similarly, the key to achieving textual coherence lies within the ability to construct a narrative with logically deducible interconnections among actions, incidents and agents (Currie, 2010, p. 191). Again, we could argue that the narrative is not an imitation but rather an artistic depiction of reality since it is characterised by a logically inferable micro-structure. The novelist needs to construct events and characters in such a way that they seem both plausible and at the same time, non-orchestrated for convenience. By ‘plausible’ I don’t mean to imply that narratives should present static and predictably dull storylines. The author must attribute a sense of pseudo-causality to her carefully manipulated creation, her narrated events varying from ordinary incidents to extraordinary circumstances, emerging nonetheless naturally out of the narrative flow. As Aristotle (1990, p. 41) indicated, “Probable impossibilities are preferable to improbable possibilities…. If one does posit an irrationality and it seems more or less rational, even an oddity is possible.”

A Reference for Fiction  69 Moreover, logical inferences are still expected in genres such as fantasy and science fiction, since internal consistency is precisely what renders the story comprehensible. Walton (1990, p. 329) draws attention to the fact that the resemblances to reality supersede the differences to the extent that fantastic fiction is congruent and comprehensible. And Matravers (1997, pp. 424–425) points towards the text’s internal information a reader is called to extract, for its very arrangement defines the level of internal consistency that is later to be juxtaposed, if need be, to reality. So far, I argued that consistency as the precondition for the suspension of disbelief can only be achieved by an indeterminate degree of correlation to reality, and that it is the inner structure of the narrative that allows for such connection to be established in the first place. I will now discuss the consequences of inconsistency. 4.3.2  An Account of Inconsistency Aristotle (1990, p. 43) believed that “It is less serious if the artist was unaware of the fact that a female deer does not have antlers than if he painted a poor imitation.” Arguably, the author should aim to acquire sufficient knowledge through research as well as to draw a plausible depiction of her narrated events without contradictions, to ensure that the reader will engage in make-believe until the end of the narrative. Indeed, lack of coherence can endanger not just the content of her work, but the storyteller’s own reliability, for the authenticity of her ­portrayals reveals her attitude towards her own work (Mole, 2009, p. 502). And while a sense of vagueness may sometimes be intentional, the author should still strive for clarity of content and compatibility, not necessarily with the real, but with the potential. 4.3.3  Consistency of Agent: The Lifelike Character Defined Often used to describe the vividly painted character, the adjective ‘lifelike’ encompasses both the process and philosophy of character creation, as it points towards a referential relationship with the real human being. At this point I want to clarify that ‘lifelike’ is not a restricting term, and as such does not refer solely to the character of the realistic novel. Rather, it is related to inner and outer states, in order to describe a textual entity comprehensible by the reader, even if not designed to evoke sentiments of sympathy. In that respect, a sci-fi character may very well have greater depth and specificity than one in other forms of fiction. Gardner (2001) elaborates accordingly: A talking tree, a talking refrigerator, a talking clock must speak in a way we learn to recognize, must influence events in ways we can

70  A Reference for Fiction identify as flowing from some definite motivation…. Thus the process by which one writes a fable, on one hand, or a realistic story, on the other, is not much different. (Gardner, 2001, pp. 21–22) In the previous chapter I discussed the objections to juxtaposition of the fictional character with a real human being. I now suggest that a convincing fictional character (or a character that is inspired by her ­real-life counterpart) is one that can be perceived as possibly existent in possible fictional worlds, under possible circumstances; a character that is believable enough so as not to appear fabricated in order to serve pre-­ constructed plots or purely didactic aims, and whose attributed personality, actions and motivations make sense (even if the reader disagrees with them) and lead the narrative to unfold. E.M. Forster (1974, p. 69) believed that a character can only come alive if the novelist knows everything there is to know about her, including things that remain hidden from the reader. This doesn’t mean that we must exhaust ourselves in an endless invention of meaningless details, or that all novelists work with the same pattern, technique or goals. Yet Forster’s principle encapsulates a fundamental principle in character creation: a fictional character can only be perceived by a reader as real, if the author knows or presumes enough about her to form a complete portrait full of compatible possibilities. We can argue that fictional people cannot be regarded as ‘possible’ since the reader is not in a position to provide determinate answers to questions not addressed in the rigid spatio-temporal framework of the text. Notwithstanding this, the author should hold at least some knowledge of her characters, inside and outside the text. As Gardner (2001) comments, The writer’s characters must stand before us with a wonderful clarity, such continuous clarity that nothing they do strikes us as improbable behaviour for just that character, even when that character’s action is, as sometimes happens, something that came as a surprise to the writer himself. We must understand, and the writer before us must understand, more than we know about the character; otherwise, neither the writer nor the reader after him could feel confident of the character’s behaviour when the character acts freely. (Gardner, 2001, p. 45) The fictional agent usually carries with her a hypothetical past and a possible future. The former is referred to as ‘character background’ and will be discussed later. The notion of the latter has been frequently dismissed, often summed up in the question ‘How many children had Lady Macbeth?’ (Knights, 1973). The reasoning behind the irony lies within

A Reference for Fiction  71 the idea that a character is an indeterminate story element and therefore it would be naive to discuss a future for her. I argue that the concept of character future is not useful just for the reader – who many a time seeks reassurance in reaching the final catharsis. More than often, authors refuse to break off the continuation of the fictional lives they have created – hence the concept of the ‘open’ or ‘ambiguous endings’ often leading to sequels. I’m not saying that all readers and authors alike spend time daydreaming about fictional lives; nor do I suggest that it is a prerequisite for writers to dwell on these lives once their work is finished. Rather, the novelist should have a sense of who her character used to be and what she may become, in order to offer the reader a convincing account of her narrated present. A speculated future with episodic detail isn’t necessary; it simply pertains to a character’s idiosyncratic qualities and their potential evolution and change. Reaching her journey, a character may have undergone internal (or even external) transformations or found herself at the beginning of new paths. It is such scenarios that intrigue the reader, rendering the text complex and believable. At the end of Disgrace (1999), Lurie finds himself in a new situation, partly chosen by him, and partly chosen for him. His future is somewhat visible, but not concrete: What will entail, being a grandfather? As a father he has not been much of a success [past, depicted in present narration], despite trying harder than most. As a grandfather he will probably score lower than average too. He lacks the virtues of the old: equanimity, kindliness, patience. But perhaps those virtues will come as other virtues go: the virtue of passion, for instance. He must have a look again at Victor Hugo, poet of grandfatherhood. There may be things to learn. (Coetzee, 1999, p. 291) Looking through Lurie’s eyes, his past choices are, in a sense, to blame for Lucy’s fate, and as such, his own. Now he wonders whether his future will be different, and within the context of post-apartheid Africa, such a future has weighty thematic emphasis as well. The possibility of Lurie’s future exists directly in relation to the non-fictional South Africa. Moody (1998) lets the reader glimpse into his characters’ future, concerning the relationship between the Hoods and the Williamses: This quarter hour was the last time when the Hoods and the Williamses would be this close, when their stories would be so easily told together, when, if there was going to be conversation on the subject of those keys and that party, or about dry-humping and teenaged drinking, or about the misshapen affection that bound these

72  A Reference for Fiction people, such talk should have taken place. They would be neighbours for a while yet. (Moody, 1998, p. 259) Again, this paragraph allows the reader to imagine a life for the Hoods and the Williamses beyond the text. Such small clue suffices to attribute realism to Moody’s narration. And in The Course of Love (2017), Rabih appears settled with his past, happy with his present and as ready as ever about his future: Very little can be made perfect, he knows that now. He has a sense of bravery it takes to live even an utterly mediocre life like his own. To keep all of this going, to ensure his continuing status as an almost sane person, his capacity to provide for his family financially, the survival of his marriage and the flourishing of his children – these projects offer no fewer opportunities for heroism than an epic tale. …And for a brief moment on the slopes of a Scottish mountain in the late-afternoon summer sun – and then thereafter – Rabih Khan feels that he might, with Kirsten by his side, be strong enough for whatever life demands of him. (de Botton, 2017, pp. 221–222) Finally, at the end of The Glorious Heresies (2016) Ryan Cusack, released from prison, with the relationship with his abusive father reshaped and his relationship with Karine broken due to his infidelity and drug dealings, is standing at the bank of river Lee next to Maureen, who wants to make amends with her own past and contemplates: Beyond them turned the world and the land and its sleeping city. Maureen felt giddy. Robbie O’Donovan had been a mistake Cork hadn’t even noticed, but this one, this one she’d substitute, a life for a life, and she’d make damn sure the city knew it. ‘I will put you right,’ she said. ‘Sure haven’t I already saved your life?’ (McInerney, 2016, p. 371) For McInerney and her readers, this is not the end of her characters’ textual lives. In the novel’s sequel, The Blood Miracles (2018), we are reunited with Ryan who is trying to recover from his suicide attempt with Karine at his side, and is called to make decisions about his life. In summary, it would be impossible to predict the future of a flesh-andblood person, let alone that of a fictitious one. But if a reader catches herself wondering what may become of the characters, this means that the author convincingly conveyed them. As Forster (1974, p. 57) indicated,

A Reference for Fiction  73 “[P]eople in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner, as well as their outer life can be exposed.” 4.3.4  Inconsistency of Agent Inconsistency is a fictional agent whose ascribed personalities, actions, motivations and emerging emotions don’t exist in harmonic interconnection but more as if they were designed or forced to fit the plot. Put plainly, a character whose behaviour doesn’t make sense. Richard Cumberland (1959) wrote: I do not propose to make any demands upon my hero that he cannot reasonably fulfil, or press him into straights from which virtue, by its native energy, cannot extricate herself with ease; I shall require of him no sacrifices for the sake of public fame, no pedantic ostentatious apathy, for his lot is humble, and his feelings natural; I shall let him swim with the current, and not strive to tow him against the stream of probability. (Cumberland, 1959, p. 62) Similarly, Henry Fielding (1959) believed that [T]he actions should be such as may not only be within the compass of human agency, and which human agents may probably be supposed to do but they should be likely for the very actors and characters themselves to have performed for that may be only wonderful and surprising in one man, may become improbably, or indeed impossible, when related of another. (Fielding, 1959, p. 60) Indeed, it is not enough for a fictional agent to be defined by compatibility to the real person (i.e. general plausibility of actions) but also by internal congruence, that is, to be logically explainable as an entity acting and reacting within the narrative. I’m not implying, of course, that characters need to be linearly monotonous and unvaried. To quote Fielding (ibid, p. 61) again, “[T]hough every good author will confine himself within the bounds of probability, it is by no means necessary that his characters, or his incidents, should be trite, common, or vulgar.” Since life itself is full of contradictions and humans have no option but to deal with obstacles, diversity in action and reaction is to be expected. For Aristotle (1990, p. 24), even the occasional inconsistency should be “consistently inconsistent.” A character can present versatile and even contradictory traits if they manifest through different circumstances, which will either trigger or justify them. The manifestation of such

74  A Reference for Fiction unexpected characteristics can actually enhance characterisation, since it is precisely such complexity that defines humans. At the Harolds’ key-party in The Ice Storm (1994), a different aspect of Elena, who until that point in the narrative appears conservative and distant, emerges: [S]he found herself suddenly elated at the party; there was no other way to put it. She felt the loosening of the constraints that had bound her since she had come of age, and she realized she would play. She would select a key. She would clutch it to her, permit it to dangle around her neck, between her small, subdued breasts. She would play. The decision was a function of her Parent, her Child, or her Adult. A function of one or more of the three. (Moody, 1998, p. 153) It is the random and unwarrantable ascription of discrepant traits and motives that deprives the fictional agent from its credibility, misleading the reader towards false assumptions as well as speculations that extricate her from the narrative altogether. Margolin (1987) cautions respectively: Characterization is severely problematized if a narrative agent is ascribed semantically incompatible properties without restriction or specification for time, place, situation or object. In this case we may say that several irreconcilable strands are superposed on one another, turning the individual into a plurality of mutually exclusive characterization possibilities which cannot be conjointly asserted in any narrative universe…. The different properties of the narrative agent cannot consequently be forged into the image of a single person and the construction of any internally consistent literary character is obstructed. (Margolin, 1987, p. 114) It is therefore essential that the novelist constructs her agents so that the reader is able to recognise them, align with them and decide whether she supports them or not through their fictional quests and endeavours. 4.3.5  The Stereotype Explained The Oxford Concise Dictionary (2006, p. 1415) defines ‘stereotype’ as “[A]n image or idea of a particular type of person or thing that has become fixed through being widely held.” Lebowitz (1984, p. 179) presents a simpler definition: “Stereotypes are common descriptions associated with people in various classes such as occupations, social groups or personal backgrounds.”

A Reference for Fiction  75 E.M. Forster (1974, pp. 73–81) distinguished between ‘flat’ and ‘round characters.’ The former can be built around a single trait and can possibly be described in a single sentence, while the latter can surprise the reader. In reality, Forster’s distinction aimed to distinguish between minor and major characters. Flat characters may enhance the narrative by aiding the author with the conveyance of her ideas and are frequently essential to the novel. However, his descriptions can be used to depict the stereotypical character in the contemporary novel. Smith (1999, p. 117) dismisses Forster’s distinction as simplistic and offers an alternative one, according to which, “A flat character would be one that never challenges the stereotype schema it invokes on its first appearance. A round character would be one where the initial schema is subject to considerable revision.” I agree that Forster’s typology fails to capture the principles of character construction so as to caution against the creation of a stereotype. However, one thing becomes evident from both views: a fictional character that is considered stereotypical lacks individuality and complexity, and has been designed as such either on purpose (to function as a prosaic symbol or idea) or because the author failed to design her in uniqueness and vividness. Since the character’s prototype – the real human being – is essentially an accumulation of innumerable diverse elements that constitute her personality, there is nothing to indicate that her fictional counterpart should not be created as such. Harvey (1965, p. 44) accordingly cautioned that against the creation of puppets by advising authors to give their characters autonomy. Similarly, Chatman (1972, p. 61) underlines the significance of heterogeneity and uniqueness in fictional personalities. A fictional character should be depicted in many shades. Characters of unrealistic perfection or pure evilness, with no apparent motivations, that remain static and unalterable over the course of the narrative, are unconvincing and often called ‘one-dimensional’ or ‘cardboard.’ I therefore agree with Price (1983), who argues that The complexity of novels comes … of those tensions between resemblance and difference among characters. If characters are too symmetrically disposed about a simple principle of good and evil or life and death, they impoverish each other. If they are disposed in asymmetrical but still palpable relationships, they create questions about principle and arouse disturbances of feeling – and thereby give energy and life to events. (Price, 1983, p. 53) Moreover, even if most humans bear characteristics indicative of their socio-cultural, ethnic and often religious background, they are always much more than a mere summary of signposts, each with their own

76  A Reference for Fiction attributes; so should the fictional character be described by a multitude of traits and infinite possibilities (Harvey, 1965, p. 70). In the Ice Storm (1998), Moody narrates the lives of two seemingly ordinary middle class, white, American families in the 1970s. Each of his characters stands out like no other, their individualities causing conflicts, dramatic peaks and personal redemptions. In fact, Moody’s novel can be viewed as a statement against the indiscriminate lumping together of national identities, of habits and tastes and beliefs, highlighting precisely that the expected conformity to such labels proves destructive for private lives. The author also makes a point by depicting the stereotypical perception of the black community by New Canaans through Paul’s perspectives: Paul Hood had met a few of them, black people. Though there were none in his elementary school—East School—there were five in Saxe Junior High when he was there. They all came from the middle of town, from the rented rooms above Fat Tuesday’s or Pic-a-Pants…. Brian Harris ruled Saxe Junior High. He wore his hair long, in a Black Panther Afro, and this spooked everybody. And he was a superior athlete, but maybe only because every white kid in New Canaan had been brought up to believe that Afro-Americans were superior athletes. This was something Paul’s dad had actually told him. In basketball, Brian Harris had developed this double-pump reverse lay-up thing that some white guys were trying hard to copy. All he had to do was walk to the basket—they let him through. (Moody, 1998, p. 196) In Disgrace (1999, p. 201), Coetzee presents the binding codes of the Native South African culture, by depicting the complexity of actions and their implications through origin. When Lurie seeks to confront Petrus about protecting Pollux, Petrus responds: “You go away, you come back again—why?” He stares challengingly. “You have no work here. You come to look after your child. I also look after my child.” Your child? Now he is your child, this Pollux? Yes. He is a child. He is my family, my people. So that is it. No more lies. My people. As naked an answer as he could wish. Well, Lucy is his people. Additionally, stereotypical characters often serve as vehicles for sweeping generalisations. Examples include the aggressive black male that lives in a ghetto, listens to a certain type of music and speaks a certain kind of argot; the foolish, beautiful girl, often depicted with blonde hair; the Muslim terrorist; or the Jewish lawyer, often portrayed as ravenous,

A Reference for Fiction  77 exploitative and ruthless. Furthermore, a stereotype in fiction is often a type of character initially introduced as uncommon, that has nonetheless been so widely used and exhausted that it is now considered trite. The most typical example is that of the prostitute with the ‘heart of gold.’ Recapitulating, each character needs to demonstrate a variety of versatile characteristics that can be justified in terms of either their personal histories or current fictional journey, and not be introduced as if their traits are an inherent part of an identity inspired by real-life preconceptions.

4.4  Summary of Conclusions The narrative bears an indefinite relation to and is inspired by reality. As such, consistency is a keystone to the writing of fiction. Since the character is inspired by the actual human being, the drawn references need to be identifiable by the reader so that she can follow her through her narrative quests. The amount of detail accompanying character depictions can vary according to the author’s intentions and the narrative’s requirements, and function as an explanatory tool and attributor of realism. I will close this chapter with the following quote by Thomas Hardy (1959): The real, if unavowed, purpose of fiction is to give pleasure by gratifying the love of the uncommon in human experience, mental or corporeal. This is done all the more perfectly in proportion as the reader is illuded to believe the personages true and real like himself. Solely to this latter end a work of fiction should be a precise transcript of ordinary life: but the uncommon would be absent, and the interest lost. Hence, the writer’s problem is, how to strike the balance between the uncommon and the ordinary so as on the one hand to give interest, on the other to give reality. In working out the problem, human nature must never be made abnormal, which is introducing incredibility. The uncommonness must be in the events, not in the characters; and the writer’s art lies in shaping that uncommonness while disguising its unlikelihood, if it be unlikely…. The whole secret of fiction and the drama – in the constructional part – likes in the adjustment of things unusual to things eternal and universal. The novelist who knows exactly how exceptional, and how non-exceptional, his events should be made, possesses the key to the art. (Hardy, 1959, p. 58)

5 Character and the Author

5.1  The Author of Fiction The author of literature has been widely discussed, glorified, criticised and even proclaimed dead (Barthes, 1977; Foucault, 2001; McCann, 1993; Paris, 1997). Her intentions, techniques, moral duties and her personality have been the bone of contention among writers of all capacities since the birth of literary theory (Bennett, 2005; Eagleton, 1993). In this chapter, I plan to discuss the validity and relevance of the aforementioned topics to the writer of fiction, placing a focus on the authorial role and function, in order to discover the common denominators of different professionals and artists at more than one level. 5.1.1  The Author Defined: Establishing an Identity The Concise Oxford Dictionary (2006, p. 88) defines the author as either “[A]n originator of a plan or idea.” Andrew Bennett (2005) takes this definition one step further: [The] notion of the author involves the idea of an individual (singular) who is responsible for or who originates, who writes or composes, a (literary) text and who is thereby considered an inventor or founder and who is associated with the inventor or founder of all of nature, with God (with God-the-father), and is thought to have certain ownership rights over the text as well as a certain authority over its interpretation. The author is able to influence others and is often thought of as having authority over matters of opinion, as being one to be trusted, even obeyed. (Bennett, 2004, p. 7) It appears that the simplest explanation of the authorial function would be to create, compose, or as frequently stated by writers, ‘breathe life into’ a text. Before I continue with my analysis though, I’d like to ponder over the status of the novelist, in order to pinpoint the motivations and role assigned to this individual who writes.

Character and the Author  79 5.1.2  Is the Author Dead? In his work Image, music, text, Barthes (1977) declared the death of the author by contextually de-personifying the text, drawing the emphasis on the impersonality of language and rendering the (impersonal) reader the epicentre of the constructive process: The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture…. The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. Yet this destination cannot any longer be personal: the reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted. (Barthes, 1977, pp. 145–148) Embraced by a number of theorists, Barthes’s view essentially dissociates the author from her creation thus rendering her irrelevant to it. It could be viewed as an act of liberation from the tyrant-creator whose presence until recently has been imposed and overemphasised over her speculated intentions, bore upon by her socio-temporal and ethnographic origins. The text belongs to no one, it exists independent from defined subjects and can only be decoded by the concept of a faceless decipherer – the reader. Presenting a counter-analysis to Barthes’s ideas, Foucault considered (2001, pp. 1622–1636) the author to be an extra-textual predecessor of the narrative, albeit its originator. For Foucault, the text is neutral, independent from the authorial, god-like figure, but at the same time pointing to it. As he wrote (ibid, p. 1624), “[T]he quibbling and confrontations that a writer generates between himself and his text cancel out the signs of his particular individuality.” Concluding his thoughts on the authorial function, he explained that (ibid, p. 1631), “[I]t does not refer, purely and simply, to an actual individual insofar as it simultaneously gives rise to a variety of egos and to a series of subjective positions that individuals of any class may come to occupy.” Others have disagreed with Barthes. For instance, Graham McCann (1993) rejects his view as playful cynicism, attributing a possible distortion of literary theory’s best intentions. As he writes, Although critics often seek to justify the importance of language as a means of eliminating the aggressive authority of the human subject and its history of misdemeanours, they cannot escape this same history, and they end by erecting the edifice of language upon the tomb of the human self. (McCann, 1993, p. 77)

80  Character and the Author I contend that, while it is arbitrary to enslave the narrative to a series of hypothetical intentions by an absent creator, it is also unreasonable to altogether banish her from its circumference. The text did not originate itself, but bears the unique style, language, artistic signature and even the personal views – either subconscious or premeditated – of the person that composed it (Booth, 1961). As demonstrated in Chapter 2, the author cannot have total control over the way the text is deciphered, since decoding is a bidirectional, dynamic process. However, not all meaning is ambiguous and not every statement is ill-defined. After all, while the written word is indeed subject to interpretation, its very form aims to eliminate misunderstanding and standardise language (Harper, 2010). If the author’s projected sense of reality is coherently displayed, the reader will recognise it and use her own to recreate the neutral text anew. Foucault (2001, p. 1629) argues that our perceived notion of the author is compiled by our own tendencies when handling the text, even more so if one takes into consideration the period and form of the text. Put differently, the novelist engages in a conscious process of constructing a fictional world from scratch, without prior knowledge of how the reader will perceive it. Her mission is to deliver the work as concisely as possible, without contextual indeterminacies prompted by inclinations of ostentatious didacticism or self-­ aggrandizement. Even if she did construct her every sentence with concealed intentions, there is no guarantee that they would be discerned by her readership. Ergo, the narrative emerges as an artificial print of the author’s existence, entailing the products of both her subconscious and consciousness. Furthermore, the book doesn’t constitute a ­m irror-like reflection of the author’s own thoughts and emotions, or has been created to convey a direct message to the reader (Atwood, 2003, pp. 120–121). Frank Smith (1982, p. 87) makes the same point, noting that “Writers cannot reach through a text to the reader beyond, any more than a reader can penetrate the text to make direct contact with the writer.” Overall, the author should neither be reduced to deadly absence nor augmented to divinity. Her connection to the text begins and ends owing to her very status of personhood. It is within this understanding that her role should be examined. The concept of human identity is connected to those parameters surrounding and moulding it. Much like everyone else, the novelist is characterised by many a sociological, ethnographical and historical feature which, as inseparable parts of her identity, are bound to influence her work. Intentions or artistic mission aside, the author bears and transmits her social as well as temporal attributes. Whether bequeathed or involuntary, her cultural heritage will be passed from generation to generation in order to inform, enlighten or even disenchant readers of different times, places and ideologies.

Character and the Author  81 Raymond Williams (1992) writes on this point: Real social relations are deeply embedded within the practice of writing itself, as well as in the relations within which writing is read. To write in different ways is to live in different ways. It is also to be read in different ways, in different relations, and often by different people. (Williams, 1992, p. 205) At the same time, the author is not to be identified with her spatio-­ temporal setting. What Harper (2010) suggests is, [T]o look at Creative Writing and creative writers in terms of the identity of the activities that are undertaken; and how these activities relate to the identities of creative writers, personally, and socially. In this way, discourse, collective identification, ideologies, symbolisation, social patterns of expectation and sense of self all play a role. (Harper, 2010, pp. 96–97) Despite the universal themes unifying human stories, two writers can never narrate the same way. In that respect, a narrative becomes part of the author’s identity, who leaves her perceptual and emotive imprint on paper. Such imprint however is not intentional. The thoughts and emotions in a piece of fiction represent those of the characters; the more complex and authentic those characters are drawn, the less didacticism the novel will entail. The author may still ascribe aspects of her personality to this character or that; those, however, will constitute a part of a wider picture, not mirror her monolithically. Therefore she will not be defined by the text in its entirety but leave her cognitive traces in the unfolding narrative. In any case, we should question the overarching domination of language over the human subject. Language is the product of thought and the fundamental means of its communication. As such, the signifier cannot possibly be replaced by it. Rather, she will use it as her primary tool in order to convey ideas and mould concepts, whether she acts as a propagandist, a moral missionary or a storyteller. A. Leon Pines (1985) writes: In language, relations and whole networks of relations are frozen into concepts labelled by words. These concepts and words capture the way a culture slices up reality: what relations are considered important enough to discriminate and preserve, what patterns and regularities have been worthwhile preserving, and so forth…. Language serves the dual purpose of thought and communication. The ability to acquire and use language enables the amplification of meaningful experience. (Pines, 1985, pp. 103–104)

82  Character and the Author The novelist constructs, creates, originates and does so by utilising and cultivating language. Language is the only tangible tool that she can use, which can be discerned by the reader. Symbols, hidden meanings or possible intentions can only be evaluated as meta-linguistic devices without escaping their hermeneutic nature. In that respect, the author cannot be separated from her text, nor can she be fully identified with it. Furthermore, the author isn’t revealed through her social and historical circumstances. On the contrary, it is she who reveals her own perceptions of them through a process of exploration; in their turn, they may affect her state of being through a process of self-exploration (Price, 1983, p. 61). It is worth remembering that for decades now, art and its time and place of birth have been strongly connected, bearing the imprint of a culture’s way of life as well as its aesthetic, moral and social codes (Williams, 1992, p. 130). The culture begets the artist, who will originate the work of art. To what extent her work will represent or influence her contemporary status quo or the forthcoming generations, will be determined by a number of parameters outside her own control. Whether she intentionally aims to exert such influence in the first place, as well as her possible motivations for doing so, is what I will explore next. 5.1.3  The Authorial Purpose The idea that the author is burdened by moral responsibilities towards society as some kind of reformer is another topic under discussion (Atwood, 2003; Booth, 1961; Phelan, 2005). On the one hand, there are those who view that the author’s primary mission is precisely to ennoble. For instance, George Eliot (1959) believed that [The] man or woman who publishes writings inevitably assumes the office of teacher or influencer of the public mind…. He can no more escape influencing the moral taste, and with it the action of the intelligence, than a setter of fashions in furniture and dress can fill the shops with his designs and leave the garniture of persons and houses unaffected by his industry. (Eliot, 1959, p. 94) Similarly, Tobias Smollett (1959) considered that If I have not succeeded in my endeavours to unfold the mysteries of fraud, to instruct the ignorant, and entertain the vacant … I have, at least, adorned virtue with honours and applause, branded iniquity with reproach and shame, and carefully avoided every hint or expression which could give umbrage to the most delicate reader. (Smollett, 1959, p. 91)

Character and the Author  83 Yet the idea of burdening the author with the duty of enhancing virtue in her readers has been rejected by many. For them, the author is considered no more or less an artist liberated from all sorts of chastising purposes and her sole obligation is to be loyal in the truthfulness of her art (James, 2001; Thackeray, 1959). Many authors have voiced their opposition to being assigned the role of the social preacher. For instance, Richard Cumberland (1959) wrote that All that I am bound to do as a story-maker, is to make a story; I am not bound to reform the constitution of my country in the same breath, nor even (Heaven be thanked!) to overturn it…. Nature is my guide; man’s nature, not his natural rights: the one ushers me by the straight avenue to the human heart, the other bewilders me in a maze of metaphysics. (Cumberland, 1959, p. 92) And Nathaniel Hawthorne (1959) saw the implementation of personal ethics as an intrusion into the novel’s viability: When romances do really teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtle process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod, – or rather, by sticking a pin through a butterfly, – thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude. (Hawthorne, 1959, p. 93) Based on my previous discussion on the correlation between fiction and reality, I argue that premeditated moral didacticism in the narrative will interrupt its natural flow, abruptly extracting the reader from the text and compromising its believability. If a reader’s interest in a novel is anthropocentric, the complexity of the human psyche and the diversity in character motivations, wishes and moral conduct are the elements she will possibly seek out in order to enrich her experience. So unless the choice of author is linked specifically to established moral stances and their expressions, the storyteller’s personal views should be irrelevant to the text, or at least not characterise it. I don’t insinuate here that literature has no impact on a societal level or that novelists cannot be viewed as inspirational figures. A work that is generated by someone’s creativity bears hints of their way of thinking and her perception of socio-cultural norms. In the same respect, Booth (1961, p. 70–71) questioned the existence of pure impartiality, stating that the author leaves her convictional print on her works even if she doesn’t intend to do so, and at the same time warned that there is little

84  Character and the Author room for a work to be moulded according to individual prejudices. Reverting to Chapter 4 and the notion that fiction is inspired by reality, an encompassing (I use ‘encompassing’ rather than ‘objective’ since the latter can be interpreted ambiguously in the discussed context, justifiably so) depiction of the presented world, even if inevitably touched by the originator’s ideas, can still allow room for the reader to position herself in the setting. In any case, the greatest novels of all time, from Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (2002) to Hugo’s Les Misérables (1955), and from Nobokov’s Lolita (2004) to Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (2013) could be perceived as corruption-instigating doctrines if their creators were supposed to abide by the social reformer role assigned to them. Indeed, it would be arbitrary to assume that Coetzee (1999) justifies David Lurie’s actions. What he proffers is a complex portrayal of life, where ethos and morality are not one-dimensional notions. Similarly, Waters’s (2002) characters define their own faith. Sue Trinder and Maud Lilly plot against each other, yet they find themselves united in a happy-­ ending. This isn’t indicative of Waters advocating dishonesty. And The Ice Storm (1994) revolves around the causes and impacts of marital infidelity, amongst which a tragedy occurs. We cannot assume that Moody attempts to propagandise betrayal here; rather, he displays a meticulous depiction of human relations in a small American town in the 1970s. Ethics should naturally emerge from the narrative, as opposed to being simply stated. Readers won’t necessarily agree with the morals adopted by characters anyway, so it’s the validity of their choices that needs to clearly emerge from the narrative (Egri, 1960, p. 9). For example, Flannery O’ Connor (1969, pp. 33–34) used words such as ‘shock’ and ‘shout’ as means of emphasis to influence those whom she referred to as the ‘hard of hearing’ and the ‘almost-blind.’ As explained in ­Chapter 1, the role of the reader can be assumed by anyone universally. This automatically points towards a versatility of ethical interpretations stemming from socio-cultural norms as well as personal experiences. Consequently, if the author chooses to consciously embark upon a moral education of her own accord, she may reinforce ideas, convince about certain values or equally provoke disbelief and anger. Again, I don’t ignore the influence of art on socio-political affairs. After all, I have already expressed the view that the author does leave her cognitive imprint on paper. It is the level of premeditation that will ultimately define the artistic outcome, resulting in an acceptance thereof, or rejection. Instead, the narrative’s reality will merge with the reader’s perception of her own reality, and any conclusions of moral substance will be drawn on a subjective level. The imposition of subjective ethics in a novel which is supposed to be inspired by any reality could be regarded as little more than propaganda by many. Even if the author’s incentives were of the purest intentions, her moral codes would still not be automatically

Character and the Author  85 compatible with those of every reader that would ever sift through the pages of her book. To quote Thomas Hardy (1959, p. 98) “[A] novel was never written by the purest-minded author for which there could not be found some moral invalid or other whom it was capable of harming.” Rejecting moral didacticism as an incentive for writing fiction, we could still come up with a wealth of possible writing motivations. Julia Casterton (2005, p. 1) believed that writing satisfies an inherent need. Celia Brayfield (1996, p. 21) speaks of “unconscious wells of fantasy in our minds,” observing that the narration of stories, which evolved alongside the human intellect, serves to provide an understanding of the surrounding world. Mills (2006, p. 16) notes that the writer “builds new links between self and world.” O’ Connor (1972, p. 53) admitted that the author’s primary aim should be communication – thus challenging the idea of the lonely, introverted writer who is striving for some sort of liberating privacy (although there’s nothing to render the idea invalid). And Viktor Shklovsky (1990, p. 21) considered the author’s purpose to be the “deautomatization of perception” – in other words to present the world and its elements anew. As it emerges, the esoteric engines that activate the writing mechanisms are as subjective and versatile as every other motivational force that guides human beings towards choosing and acting in a certain way. There is however, one element that functions as a common denominator under all such triggers: the interest in the human psyche and its inexhaustible possibilities. I shall return to this suggestion, but first I wish to complete my exploration of the authorial role by discovering whether the author is a craftsman or an artist. 5.1.4  The Artist and the Craftsman In the Art of Poetry (2001), Horace posed the following question: Do good poems come by nature or by art? This is a common question. For my part, I don’t see what study can do without a rich vein of talent, [410] nor what good can come of untrained genius. They need each other’s help and work together in friendship. (Horace, 2001, p. 133) Many are convinced that creating fictional worlds is an attributed gift and any attempt to apply technical principles on it is futile, while others contend that writing is a skill to be learnt. The author is regarded as either the talented artist who creates guided by her instinct alone or as the self-made craftsman who seeks, and achieves with practice, constant improvement. The arising dilemma divides the participants into the advocates of writing pedagogy and the ones who believe that if the muse is not there, she will not be appearing at all.

86  Character and the Author In May 2010, British sports broadcaster and former table tennis international champion, Matthew Syed, motivated by extensive research and his own life experience, published an analytic presentation of the nature-versus-nurture debate, in order to dispel the myth of the natural-­ born genius. By providing numerous examples from a variety of fields, Syed (2010) convincingly argued that the common denominator under the world’s greatest champions and artists was the accumulation of tens of thousands of hours of practice. The purpose of his work was not to completely dismiss the notion of talent, but rather to emphasise the importance of practical experience and intensive effort. Indeed, research on creativity has demonstrated that its ‘trait’ is observable in every individual, in different degrees, and that exemplary works are usually the end product of much practice, testing and contemplation of methods, mistakes and perseverance (Hahn, 1968, p. 5). J.P. Guildford (1959) initiated three major categories of creativity traits: fluency, referring to the individual’s ability to retrieve stored information from her own memory; flexibility, pertaining to her problem-solving adjustability and approach; and elaboration, which constitutes the completion of the concept with details. Whilst I don’t reject the notion of natural talent, I argue that it’s subject to epistemological analysis itself. At the same time, Syed’s research, the range of which encompassed fields from sports to poetry (2010, p. 15) has demonstrated how practice as the means to continuous amelioration solidifies such a notion. In that respect, Creative Writing is an art subject to formations of craftsmanship. I thence agree with Harper (2010), who comments that The intention, the will, the desire, that brings about numerous acts of Creative Writing involves person choice. But it also involves neurological activity that is sometimes independent of such choice…. We can say that [Creative Writing] can be learnt, and therefore taught, but we need to acknowledge that some of its elements involve long term neurological developments. (Harper, 2010, p. 91) Furthermore, the term ‘technique’ is often misinterpreted. The act of creating fictional worlds from scratch cannot abide by instructional specifications but is organic, perceptive and unpredictable. In fact, the less the authorial technique is perceived by the reader, the further she can immerse herself in the story making the most of the experience (Brayfield, 1996, pp. 14–15). Put differently, the muse shall favour the author who is both able to comprehend the process and philosophy surrounding Creative Writing, and eager to keep practicing much like every other professional.

Character and the Author  87 At the same time, the synthetic or analytical assumptions deriving from both the creation and the study of literature aim to enlighten, not just the disciples of Creative Writing, but also those of theoretical analysis. Even if we endorsed the view of Scholes and Kellogg (1966, p. 272) that “Criticism can never reduce art to rules. Its aim should be not to enact legislation for artists but to promote understanding of works of art,” we would still need to explore where and how such understanding stems from. The authors (ibid) could have argued that creative writing is an ‘unruly art,’ but the categorisation of a field as ‘art’ should not exclude the concept of methodical comprehension. It is precisely through consistency and harmony that the novelist is able to convince and gain the trust of the most demanding of modern readers, who will not surrender to the authority of a popular name anymore. For this reason, the non-negotiable polemic against theory can be more dangerous than beneficial. As Egri (1960, xiv–xv) argued, instinct alone can lead to the creation of a masterpiece but equally to a failure. Constantin Stanislavski defined inspiration as the result of conscious hard work, emphasising that in art nothing is accidental (Moore, 1984, p. 12). He moreover rejected the idea of the mysteriously gifted actor, considering it to be dangerous to the evolution of the art itself and serving as an excuse for laziness (ibid, p. 15). It is true that art cannot possibly be encased within the rigid, unbending framework of a set of rules. This however, should not exclude the existence of propositional indications pertaining mainly towards a philosophy or even comprehension of what writing as an act entails. To quote Harvey (1965), We do not mean enough by technique if we mean only those particular skills or methods of articulation – control of dialogue, point of view, stream of consciousness and so on. Behind these particular skills may or may not lie the really valuable qualities of human vision, understanding and response. On the one hand, a novelist may conscientiously include in his work every aspect of character and yet remain finally unperceptive because he lacks the technique whereby these elements are composed into a living whole. Technical inadequacy here points to a more radical failure of the imagination. (Harvey, 1965, p. 30) As previously mentioned, the fictional text could be viewed as an imprint of the author’s consciousness on paper. Her aesthetic, emotive and perceptual abilities constitute the primary instruments at her disposal, guided within the realms of cognitive maps and imaginative routes. Her own critical thinking and ability to judge and define the outcome of her creative work should derive from both subjective

88  Character and the Author impressions and the comprehension of the critical reasoning embedded within the disciplinary principles of theoretical analysis. Hence, imagination is not just linked to creativity, but also to critical judgment (Johnson, 1987). In conclusion, I would like to refer to Forster’s (1959) elaboration of the artist’s creative process: What about the creative state? In it a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes the thing with his normal experiences, and out of the mixture he makes a work of art…. [H]e will wonder afterwards how he did it. Such seems to be the creative process. It may employ much technical ingenuity and worldly knowledge, it may profit by critical standards, but mixed up with it is this stuff from the bucket, this subconscious stuff, which is not procurable on demand. (Forster, cited in Allott, 1959, p. 158) I will be investigating the notion of Forster’s ‘subconscious stuff’ further.

5.2  The Muse at Works The question to emerge from this analysis is how we can come to understand and define ‘inspiration.’ I have already suggested that fiction-­ writing and reading can be viewed as anthropocentric acts. I therefore propose that the key to authorial inspiration and creative evolution lies within an encompassing exploration and understanding of human nature. The author should be on an assiduous, perpetual investigation of the idiosyncratic, emotive and physical properties that constitute the concept of the human person. The greatest resources at her disposal can be found within her own experiences. 5.2.1  Drawing from Experience Frequently, in a variety of advisory resources, we come across the recommendation to write about ‘what we know’ (Seger, 1990). This particular advice is often ambiguously interpreted or altogether misinterpreted to imply a contextual restriction to what the author is familiar with by first-hand knowledge. This is a misleading and even counter-­productive interpretation. As Stuart Dybek (2008, p. 72) warns, “[W]hat you have to remember is that the imagination doesn’t feast on fact.” Boulter (2007, p. 92) also explains that “If we ‘write what we know’ without questioning the way in which ‘what we know’ is itself an interpretation then we might find ourselves limiting our fictions.” Similarly, O’Connor

Character and the Author  89 (1972, p. 4) suggested that the author’s creative instinct may aid her to write about places and events she never actually visited and experienced. I will take a moment to scrutinise ‘experience,’ beginning with the following quote by Mark Johnson (1987): “Experience”, then, is to be understood in a very rich, broad sense as including basic perceptual, motor-program, emotional, historical, social, and linguistic dimensions…. [E]xperience involves everything that makes us human – our bodily, social, linguistic, and intellectual being combined in complex interactions that make up our understanding of our world. (Johnson, 1987, p. xvi) The notion of the novelist’s experience and knowledge of the world isn’t limited to occurrences and consequences of her physical present but rather the accumulation of her perceptual, emotive and even imaginary involvement to incidents, acquaintances and distant observations. As each person is unique, so is her creative imprint, constituting the creative product of the acuteness of her senses, as well as her perceptual and empathising abilities. As Mills (2006, p. 16) indicates, “Experience beyond the personal range of the writer can still be felt – through imagination.” For John O. Head and Clive R. Sutton (1985, p. 94), segments of experiences are constructed through self-perception and evaluation of the relationships with other people, by assessing both similarities and differences; as such, the concept of ‘experience’ is defined through our interactions with others. The process of enhancing one’s experiences through exposure to those of others doesn’t automatically release the author of the prejudices and inherent subjectivity of her socio-cultural bonds. After all, the acquisition and application of omniscient impartiality could be seen as an unrealistic expectation (Booth, 1961). The author will still interpret and subsequently convey the essence of her apprehensions through the prism of conscious or subconscious evaluations and inferences. As Marianna J. Hewson (1985) explains, Different people strive to make sense of the world; … [T]hey use their idiosyncratic existing knowledge to do this and therefore different people will acquire different conceptions even when presented with the same information. In this way, it is possible for different people to construct alternative conceptions from the same information. (Hewson, 1985, p. 156) In other words, the accumulation of data and stimuli by the author and her assessment of them will ultimately reach the reader, embedded into

90  Character and the Author the fictional setting of the novel. Hewson (ibid) also introduces the concept of ‘intellectual ecology,’ according to which, The intellectual environment in which a person lives (including cultural beliefs, language, accepted theories, as well as observed facts and events) favors the development of some concepts and inhibits the development of others…. Conceptual ecology involves a dynamic interaction between a person’s knowledge structure and the intellectual environment in which he or she lives. (Hewson, 1985, p. 154) Such subjectivity however does not impair the author’s work either creatively or technically. It is precisely the uniqueness of each narrative that captures the reader’s attention. Much like an actress, the author encompasses herself within the imaginary realms of another person’s existential sphere, offering the possibilities of the experience to the intrigued reader. The Kantian approach to a unified notion of experience can clarify this stance further. For Kant (Johnson, 1987, pp. 150–151), it is the ability of human imagination, as a ‘synthesizing activity’ that attributes objectivity to one’s subjective experiences. Johnson (ibid, p. 148) defines knowledge as “[T]he result of judgments in which the contents of our sense perception are organized by concepts.” As he explains, knowledge is the summary of judgments, consisted of unified and organised general mental representations. Subsequently, the attainment of experience could be viewed as a synthetic, multidimensional act that ultimately ‘fills’ Forster’s bucket with its ‘subconscious stuff.’ In conclusion, I shall agree with Boulter (2007) in that [A]lthough it is vital that we draw from our experience, our emotion, our research … of how action works and is interpreted, if we limit ourselves to ‘what we know,’ without questioning how and why we know what we do, then we can become locked within our experience rather than inspired by it. (Boulter, 2007, p. 93) 5.2.2  The Authorial Experience Taking my analysis of ‘experience’ a bit further, I’m going to segment and examine its individual parts, beginning with life memories. The accumulation of knowledge, both intellectual and emotive, as well as their personal interpretations, can be regarded as the foundational material of the author’s individual creative input into her work (Seger, 1990). Indeed, the principal role of personal experience which is reshaped into new forms through creativity has been underlined time and again

Character and the Author  91 (Hahn, 1968). Whether such input will be conscious or not will depend on how the author chooses to use it. Sonia Moore (1984, p. 43) highlighted the primary function of emotional memory that “[N]ot only retains an imprint of an experience but also synthesizes feelings of a different nature.” It is precisely such emotional impression that renders extra-cultural and universal principles and habits recognisable, instigating empathy towards doers and recipients. Similarly, Oatley (2003, p. 165) indicates that the synergetic process of perception and memory invocation reflects the constructive projection of knowledge. Let’s take childhood memories as an example, which not only serve as a direct source of creative material but also as enhancers or interpreting devices of the experience of others. For O’ Connor (1969, p. 96), a person’s childhood alone can provide enough information about life, to last for a lifetime. Reverting to accepting emotion as an inseparable part of cognition (Keen, 2006), the aftermath of emotional imprints and their intellectual interpretations thereof essentially constitute a great part of how all of us, as individuals, perceive and explain the world. As writers, we are required to go one step further and speculate about the way emotional and intellectual memories have crystallised into shaped amalgamations in the minds of others, and convey our assumptions through our texts. In essence, if we took a moment to ‘analyse’ how such crystallisations were formed to begin with, we have a thread of logic to follow in order to map a creative path. I therefore propose that the creative process frequently referred to as writer’s intuition or inspiration is in reality the result of a sequential and multidirectional course of the following stages: Observation, Perception, Empathy and Imagination. 5.2.3  Apprehension via the Senses In his famous essay, ‘The Art of Fiction,’ Henry James (2001) wrote: It goes without saying that you will not write a good novel unless you possess the sense of reality; but it will be difficult to give you a recipe for calling that sense into being. Humanity is immense, and reality has a myriad forms; … It is equally excellent and inconclusive to say that one must write from experience. (James, 2001, p. 860) One of the most frequent pieces of advice an apprentice writer may receive is to pay close attention to her surrounding world. True enough, the author should always be alert to detail, focussing on sounds and images, all movement and manifestation in life encompassing her at any given moment. Such impressions will constitute the solid platform on which she will build her narrative universe.

92  Character and the Author Yet she’s not just an observer, but also a participator. Observation itself cannot be fruitful unless accompanied by a certain degree of comprehension, subject to the observer’s individuality, in order to translate images and sounds into meaningful occurrences. The overall purpose of observation is not philosophical, and thus the novelist doesn’t need to concern herself about how ‘objective’ her conclusions and ideas may be. It is the uniqueness of her own interpretations that should be conveyed in her narrative. Lee Martin (1998) illustrates this point accordingly: [F]iction writers are “spectators” of their characters, who are “participants” in the worlds of their stories—worlds that present situations containing their own demands for decision and action. If we imbue our fiction with aspects of ourselves—if we are ultimately both spectator and participant — it stands to reason that the key to learning something of ourselves and our worlds from the fiction we write lies in a successful merger of the two roles. (Martin, 1998, pp. 173–174) Boulter (2007, p. 16) invites the author to look beyond the obvious and become part of each moment she experiences. Each phenomenon is forged by the author’s own account of it, and as such conveyed into her textual world. Flaubert (cited in Allott, 1959, p. 126) considered the products of the author’s observations to be the mould with which the author will shape her own world. And Guy de Maupassant (1959) spoke of every writer’s unique, subjective prism of looking at such surroundings: Everything contains some element of the unexplored because we are accustomed to use our eyes only with the memory of what other people before us have thought about the object we are looking at. The least thing has a bit of the unknown in it. Let us find this. In order to describe a fire burning or a tree in a field, let us stand in front of that fire and that tree until they no longer look to use like any other fire or any other tree. That is how one becomes original. (de Maupassant, 1959, p. 130) Every little occurrence of everyday life may result in a number of different outcomes, all worth contemplating and assessing. This is the material with which fictional universes are built, and the part of fiction that is inspired by reality lies upon its foundations. Arguably, the textual attribution of a perceived reality does not suffice to create a fictional world from scratch and the act of creative writing entails more than the simple recitation of an author’s interpreted observations. For this reason, I suggest that the next stage in the inspirational sequence is the creative crafting of all observations. This is the time when the author will reach for recalled images, memories, dreams and

Character and the Author  93 impressions, reforming and combining them into unique constructs, in order to create a literary universe like no other. Placing the Kantian concept of imagination under scrutiny, Johnson (1987) analyses the concept of ‘reflective judgement,’ according to which: Reflection is an imaginative activity in which the mind “plays over” various representations (percepts, images, concepts) in search of possible ways that they might be organized…. In reflective judgement … we must reflect imaginatively on a series of representations in an attempt to come up with a concept or other representation under which they can be organized. (Johnson, 1987, pp. 157–158) I suggest that this subconscious compilation is what constitutes the concept of inspiration; or else, the conscious or subconscious pattern with which we ‘organise’ our fancies, ideas, hypotheses and creative syllogisms. The interpreted scenes of daily life are not organised into sequential patterns, but rather are stored and rearranged in the vastness of the writer’s mind, either to emerge accidentally or to be intentionally evoked in order to be transformed into new ones. Locations, personalities and faces will become disarranged and intermixed into textual constructs, modified and restructured by the author’s memory, imagination and cognition. David Novitz (1987) considered fanciful imagination to be a prerequisite in the understanding of one’s environment: [Fanciful imagination] plays an important role in adult attempts to decipher the more bewildering aspects of everyday life. For whenever established knowledge fails us, whenever there is no adequate conceptual apparatus with which to ease our confusion and bridge the gap between ignorance and insight, we fall back upon the fanciful imagination. (Novitz, 1987, pp. 32–33) Novitz’s theory can very well be applied to an author translating united and dispersed images into logical sequences in order to make sense of her surroundings. Subsequently, perception and fantasy may not be viewed as two distinct functions, but often the former encompasses the latter (Watkins, 1999, p. 146). It also becomes clear that fantasy and imagination don’t serve to distort reality, but rather enhance or reshape it into different structures. In that respect, imagination does indeed become a contributor to knowledge, rather than an alternative dimension to it. O’Connor (1972, p. 72) used the term ‘anagogical vision’ to refer to “[T]he kind of vision that is able to see different levels of reality in one image or one situation.” Imagination lends the author a second, secret

94  Character and the Author ‘eye,’ allowing her to envisage and enter a fourth dimension that will later acquire textual substance. By uniting the products of her observations with the conjectures of her imagination, she recreates the world anew and invites the reader to navigate through it. At this point, it’s worth pointing out that the exercise of fanciful imagination doesn’t presuppose either the mitigation or the altogether exclusion of logic. On the contrary, fantasy and reason are inseparable and complementary to each other (O’Connor, 1972, p. 82). Fantasy leads the author to that significant ‘what if’ from which everything will stem and allow her to wander in fictional bifurcations. Reason is there to safeguard coherence and the suspension of disbelief. Enter the intersection between the two, and the point where the authorial judgement becomes an important factor influencing the creative outcome. Recapitulating, I propose that the notion of authorial inspiration begins with the senses: the author closely observes and listens to all that surrounds her, taking in every little detail no matter how insignificant it may appear. This constant accumulation of images and sounds will constitute her material, which she will keep crafting in order to create a world anew. It is precisely the unique combinations of all such received impressions, enhanced and reshaped by her creativity that will guide her to build fictional universes. 5.2.4  Practical Research Let’s agree that the creative shuffling of an author’s memories and fancies result in the raw material from which her fictional world will emerge. Hopefully I have managed to convince you to examine the notion that fiction is inspired by elements of reality. Now let’s discuss the point of intersection where fanciful memories and reality meet (rather than collide). Or else, let’s examine how we can fill the logical gaps – ascertaining suspension of disbelief – so that the reader considers our fictional bridge sturdy enough to cross. The answer is: through research. Seger (1990, p. 3) outlines two different types of research. The first is general research, and it pertains to the apprehension via the senses analysed earlier. The second is specific research, and entails the author’s practical investigation for new information. Earlier in this chapter, I discussed the consequences of limiting ourselves to the rigid framework of empiricism, explaining that an author’s experience is not restricted to first-hand knowledge. Still, the world is a vast space and the socio-cultural elements inhabiting places and minds are so diverse that it would be impossible to claim thorough knowledge and understanding of all its aspects. Such heterogeneity however should not be regarded as either restricting or impoverishing to the author’s inspirational reserve or her thematic range. A narrative can be set at any place around the globe, and

Character and the Author  95 inhabited by any race, religion and ethnicity. The novelist’s ability to perceive and infer from humanity is one prerequisite. The other is the efficient acquisition of information. Boulter (2007, pp. 17–23) discusses several types of reading, including ‘reading as a writer,’ ‘reading with admiration’ and ‘reading as an editor,’ in order to guide the writer towards a cognitive acquisition and enhancement of her own experiences. Indeed, reading with alert senses leads to deeper levels of comprehension. Once again, the role of imagination and the creative ability to judge, suppose and daydream will guide the author beneath the textual symbols, where the diversity of meanings and conclusions lie, to steer her towards individualised impressions. The types of reading Boulter analyses can be applied to both fiction and non-fiction. A similar study of literary works can broaden our horizons revealing unfamiliar views and ideas, and enriching our knowledge and understanding of the world. Much like observing and listening to others, the author can benefit from an exposition to different viewpoints, emotions and fanciful impressions, as they open up yet another dimension which is abundant with information. It is crucial at this point to stress that research is an invaluable tool but not a means to an end. A sterile accumulation of information is meaningless without context, and the concept itself is certainly not limited to encyclopaedic data collection. Boulter (2007) warns: We need to stop characterising research as the ‘gathering of facts’ and begin to understand it as a creative and critical process: a process of discovery that embraces the chaotic musings, the leisurely observations, the struggle for words, and the search for story. All this is research, and only through this eclectic research process can we really discover the kind of ‘foundations’ we need. (Boulter, 2007, p. 24) Put differently, the author-research seeks her own kind of truth in the constellations of her observations combined with the ‘what ifs’ and ‘how abouts’ instigated by memory and perception. Our findings can solve creative dilemmas and unlock doors where our plotting and narrative structures are not quite visible in our blueprints (provided we do have blueprints). They can also attribute realism to our fictional settings, render characters believable and add those significant dimensions which will ultimately convince the reader to surrender her second self to our creations.

5.3  The Author and her Characters So far, I have discussed notions of creativity and craftsmanship concerning the narrative in its entirety. I will now explore those dynamics that

96  Character and the Author lie behind the construction of the fictional character, also examining the relationship between the author and her literary creations. 5.3.1  The Conception and Birth of the Fictional Character Since the great dramatists of ancient Greece, fiction has been built around the desires, fears and frailty of the human psyche. As the rendition of this world is perceptively anthropocentric, equally, the epicentre of the narrative cosmos is the fictional character. It is this correlation between humans and fictional persons that places the author in such a unique position, for in principle she should be inherently predisposed to comprehend the essence of her subject. Or else, as Forster (1974, p. 54) noted, “Since the novelist is himself a human being, there is an affinity between him and his subject-matter which is absent in many other forms of art.” I therefore propose that the construction of every fictional character is founded upon the comprehension of the nature and dynamics of this connection. The novelist’s task is to both invent and discover her characters through the human person. Invent, because every textual being is conceived and born ex nihilo; discover, because her individual textual elements, both ‘physical’ and idiosyncratic, will emerge from the author’s cognitive informational storage processed by her imagination. Put differently, the fictional character can be viewed as a compilation of existing human beings and the author’s ingenuity. It’s the creative conglomeration of all received data that make up the author’s inspirational provisions. In fact, most of the time the employment of all such collected elements takes place subconsciously. Lawrence Block (1985) describes this process as follows: More often, the characters we create are drawn in part from people we have known or observed, without our in any sense attempting to recreate the person on the page. I may borrow a bit of physical description, for example, or a mannerism, or an oddity of speech. I may take an incident in the life of someone I know and use it as an item of background data in the life of one of my characters. Little touches of this sort from my own life experience get threaded into my characters much as bits of ribbon and cloth are woven into a songbird’s nest–for color, to tighten things up, and because they caught my eye and seemed to belong there. (Block, 1985, pp. 74–75) Ultimately, the author who is able to understand aspects of herself also possesses inherent knowledge of humanity in general. This is because the very procedure of such exploration renders its dynamics explicit, thus serving as a guiding ‘pattern’ to the introspection of other idiosyncrasies.

Character and the Author  97 Knowing oneself can constitute the connecting link between art and the real world (O’Connor, p. 1969). One could argue that the fanciful integration of accumulated characteristics is not enough for the construction of a coherent fictional entity. Indeed, such accumulation needs to be both original and harmonic at the same time, for the author’s ultimate goal should be consistency. Further analysis on the practical aspects of originality of creation will follow shortly. For the time being, it should suffice to say that its source lies within the novelist’s own ability to understand. Hence, the process of character construction is both inherent and methodical at the same time. Her observations and conclusions, as well as the artefacts produced by her creativity, imagination and critical thinking will ultimately be conveyed on paper. Referring to the art of performing, Moore (1984) wrote: Stanislavski realized that an actor has to learn anew to see and not just to pretend to see, to hear and not just to pretend to listen … that he has to think and to feel…. Stanislavski knew that an actor’s mind, will and emotions – the three forces responsible for our psychological life – must participate in the creation of a live human being on stage. (Moore, 1984, pp. 8–9) Similarly, the novelist is called to conceive the most delicate threads of a new identity and bring it alive through her text. These same three ‘forces’ will also guide her to create a textual human being that will appear ‘alive’ in the one-dimensional world of a novel’s pages. As Marisha Pessl (2008) explains, [W]riting is a sort of acting exercise. You have to bring yourself and your own sensibility to your character, and yet you must diminish or augment certain aspects of yourself, see the world through their eyes, and judge the world according to their moral compass. (Burns, 2008, p. 38) And so the character becomes a separate entity, one the novelist is called to understand and follow. Yet such ‘independence’ is not always received unquestioningly by scholars. 5.3.2  The Character Delusion: Dispelling the Myth The validity of the notion that authors view their characters ‘as if they were real’ is questioned by a number of theorists, who consider the phrase an exaggeration (Vermeule, 2010; Williams, 1993). I’ll start with the obvious fact that many a fictional character have been based on, or inspired by, real people. I have already mentioned

98  Character and the Author the example of Napoleon Bonaparte appearing in a number of novels across time (Hugo, 1955; Winterson, 1996). Virginia Woolf is one of the central characters in Michael Cunningham’s (2002) The Hours. And Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung can be found among the fictional cast of Jed Rubenfeld’s (2006) The Interpretation of Murder. Another example would be that of Oranges are not the only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson (1985), a semi-autobiographical novel. The boundaries separating reality and fiction, memoir and the novel, have long been blurred, and a strict loyalty on either side would only impoverish the art of writing (Shields, 2010). Furthermore, the concept of a novelist engaging ‘in conversation’ with her characters refers to an important creative act. We don’t really claim to physically meet our heroes and heroines. As researchers Taylor et al. (2003) explain, In the positively-regarded context of creating writing, we are willing to accept the possibility of phenomenological peculiarities; we do not question the adult’s mental health. Writers certainly become immersed in the fantasy world they create and, as they work, may lose track of their real-world surroundings, but we doubt that novelists are seriously confused about the fantasy/reality distinction. (Taylor et al., 2003, pp. 365–366) Indeed, it is a hypothetical, imaginary experience that takes place in the author’s mind, one that will guide her to explore all possible paths of her character’s cognitive map – her mind, will and emotions as Stanislavski put it (Moore, 1984). Describing the mental process that renders the fictional character ‘autonomous,’ Taylor et al. (2003, p. 366) introduce the concept of ‘illusion of independent agency’: [T]he process of imagining the companion or the fictional world could become automatized until it is no longer consciously experienced. As the person readies him or herself for the imaginative act, the fantasy characters present themselves automatically. Their words and actions beginning to be perceived, listened to, and recorded rather than consciously created. As a result, the imagined characters are experienced as speaking and acting independently. (Taylor et al., 2003, p. 367) The idea that all imaginary dialogues are symptomatic of psychopathology is refutable. As clinical and developmental psychologist Mary Watkins (1999, pp. 1–2) points out, it is common for people in everyday life to silently address their mirror reflection or someone in a photograph. A hypothetical interaction with a physically absent interlocutor should not automatically exclude the premeditation for such a process, depriving it of a conscious and specific purpose altogether. There is no reason why a

Character and the Author  99 conjectural conversation with a character in terms of creative inventiveness should be regarded as different from the invocation to a deity or the silent appeal to a deceased loved one. Furthermore, it is not a nostalgic urge, a belief to the metaphysical or even a delusional state that motivates the novelist to look for her character in imaginary realms. It is a conscious act, during which her critical judgement and creativity are at work. As agreed, the fictional character is an inspired amalgamation of idiosyncratic attributes accumulated by a process of observation and comprehension of others as well as thorough self-introspection. Therefore, the symbolic soundless ‘voices’ of the characters speaking to the author emerge as variations of her cognition. Watkins (1999) explains this as follows: [W]e shall define “Self” as the collection of different characters … who can be said to populate an individual’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. In other words, the Self is that world of characters whom one entertains and/or identifies with…. Hence, when it is said that a dialogue is being carried out between self and imaginal other, the self here is the experiential locus of consciousness associated with the feeling of “I”. (Watkins, 1999, p. 2) Watkins (1999, pp. 18–20) moves on to analyse Mead’s account of children’s fanciful play. According to his theory, such inner conversations contribute towards a realisation and determination of selfhood and society, through the adoption of alternative perspectives. Similarly, Keen (2006, p. 221) suggests that role-play through fiction-writing can enhance empathy in novelists. Watkins’s (1999) analysis of Henry Corbin’s distinction between the imaginary and the imaginal takes this point further: [I]n modern non-premeditated usage the “imaginary” is contrasted with the “real”. Imaginary is equated with the unreal, the nonexistent. Our high valuation of the sensible world, the material and the concrete (what we take to be “real”), shines a pejorative light on the “imaginary”. By using the term “imaginal”, Corbin hopes to undercut the real-unreal distinction, and to propose instead that the imaginal not be assessed in terms of a narrowed conception of “reality,” but a broader one which gives credence to the reality of the imaginal. (Watkins, 1999, p. 4) Subsequently, the concept of character autonomy should not be examined outside the framework of a creative process. Moreover, the diversity of such hypothetical voices allows the author to exist in a perpetual exploration of material, assuming the role of both an observer and a

100  Character and the Author participator. It’s not simply the accumulated, incorporated data that is being synthesised and moulded; a semi-experiential discovery of new ones is also taking place. To quote Watkins (1999, p. 95) once more, “These articulations are not only aimed at establishing a rudimentary sense of self but are an ongoing and changing way of participating in the complex meanings and correlative definitions of self and world.” The novelist can thus be viewed as an active participant in the constant interaction between self and the world, resisting the impulse to ignore her creative instincts from fear of losing her authority and the control of her narrative. Characters always remain a product of the author’s ingenuity and can only exist dependently and interrelated to it. Essentially, the author surrenders to what Taylor et al. (2003) have described as ‘flow’: Flow refers to the pleasurable experience of becoming so totally absorbed in an activity that the sense of the passage of time is suspended, one loses track of the self and immediate surroundings, and the activity becomes effortless and unselfconscious. Authors often report the experience of flow while writing, as we suspect that flow might facilitate the development of autonomy in fictional characters. (Taylor et al., 2003, p. 367) The novelist will embark upon a thorough exploration of her creation’s characteristics, so that she does not end up constructing superficial, improbable and unconvincing fictional entities. I will close this section by citing Sir Walter Scott (1959), who wrote that [A]uthor! Alas! my dear sir, you do not know the force of paternal affection. When I light on such a character as Baillie Jarvie, or Dalgetty, my imagination brightens, and my conception becomes clearer at every step which I take in his company, although it leads me many a weary mile away from the regular road, and forces me to leap hedge and ditch to get back into the route again. If I resist the temptation, as you advise me, my thoughts become prosy, flat and dull. (Scott, 1822, cited in Allott, 1959, p. 145) The analogy of the parent is one way to look at the novelist’s role. Other comparisons would be with that of a Goddess, and an actress. I will examine them next. 5.3.3  The Absorption of Artifice: The Illusion of Free Will In the previous section, I reviewed the notion of viewing our characters as ‘independent’ or ‘real.’ It is now time to examine how the author can

Character and the Author  101 attribute the illusion of the character’s free will on paper. I propose that this can be achieved if the author holds adequate knowledge of her creation. Many popular textbooks recommend the interview method to help the new writer get acquainted with her fictional creations, usually entailing sheets of standard questions she should ‘address’ to her characters. Whilst these techniques may prove to be helpful, forced answers to a fixed checklist are more likely to project the author’s own reasoning rather than reveal something about the character herself. Instead, I suggest that the author assumes two different roles: that of the meticulous observer, and that of her character(s), much like an actress would. In the first instance, by observing her subject from a close, symbolic distance, the novelist’s critical judgement and creative imagination will guide her to follow the character as she will naturally unfold her possibilities through the diversity of hypothetical, extra-textual situations, her actions, thoughts and reactions different each time. In that respect, the information surrounding the character is accumulated through an instinctual process, according to which the author trusts her knowledge and understanding of the real world, as well as her critical judgment. Consistency and logical inference emerge in an unbiased manner by constant contemplation and self-reflection, and as such the character appears to flow through the narrative freely. In the second, the author immerses herself inside the creation. She is not merely an observer, but a participator. She adopts her character’s personality, ‘wears’ her physiognomic and psychological features, and places herself in the symbolic world she created in order to explore it through the eyes of her protagonist. Brayfield (1996) encapsulates this process as follows: You work like an actor and become the person, feeling their emotions and sensing their behaviour. Imagining yourself inside the character, you look outwards through their eyes and react to the events of the story, discovering how they feel and what they are going to do. You find yourself speaking their lines and adopting their body language. (Brayfield, 1996, p. 52) Stanislavski insisted on the actors ‘incarnating’ their characters, in order to capture their essence, rendering it explicit to the audience. As Moore (1984) explained, Stanislavski never tired of repeating that an actor must incarnate the behaviour of the character to make it seen and heard– to be clear to the audience in every way…. In good theater an actor creates the inner experiences of the character, incarnates them, and makes this creative process understandable to the audience. (Moore, 1984, pp. 12–13)

102  Character and the Author Investigating how the author can assume the role of her character, I shall begin by underlining the necessity of authorial realisation for the character’s symbolic independence. It has already been indicated that iconic character autonomy ensures coherence and believability. Watkins (1999, p. 115) proposes that the extent of character development is interlinked to character autonomy: “As the character becomes more autonomous, we know about its world not just from external observation or supposition but from the character directly.” The author surrenders her consciousness – much like Poulet’s (2001) reader does – and trusts her perceptual and imaginative aptitude in order to connect with her fictional beings, in both a godlike and maternal relationship with them: godlike because, all metaphors aside, she remains their one and only germinator, to decide upon their fate; maternal because she will have to tentatively listen and learn their needs as they will reveal them to her in the process. As Watkins (1999) asserts, [J]ust when we begin to treat all characters of the imagination as mere projections of self, a central paradox emerges. Although the other may bear some resemblance to myself or my experience, this is not always the case. I often do not plan his appearance. In the midst of my thinking, my activities, my speaking, I find he has appeared and spoken to me. In some cases, I cannot predict what he will say or know when he will end…. Even if one accepts that I have created him, one must also acknowledge that this creation, like the procreation of a child, leads to my offspring’s existing independently of my conscious intention. (Watkins, 1999, p. 94) The novelist is called to make her strings invisible, conveying the illusion that her characters seal their own fate according. Using her perceptive, emotive and imaginative dexterity, she designs their fictional paths without ‘abusing’ her authority to force dialogue and actions. As Gardner (2001, p. 43) warns, characters that are designed to serve as tools to a ‘mechanistic universe’ are deprived of convincing values, and as such are helpless against an uninspiring depiction of their thematic context. It is the latter case the authors refer to when they speak of their characters ‘rebelling.’ Essentially, the term refers to the author’s instinctual resistance to proceed with incongruous ideas. Forster (1974) elucidated: The characters arrive when evoked, but full of the spirit of mutiny. For they have these numerous parallels with people like ourselves, they try to live their own lives and are consequently often engaged in treason against the main scheme of the book. They ‘run away’, they ‘get out of hand’; they are creations inside a creation, and often inharmonious towards it; if they are given complete freedom they

Character and the Author  103 kick the book to pieces, and if they are kept too sternly in check they revenge themselves by dying, and destroy it by intestinal decay. (Forster, 1974, p. 72) Between these two poles, the author is called to maintain the equilibrium. As explained, a character’s internal inconsistency will guide the story, plotted or not, into several dead ends. If her individual characteristics do not constitute a coherent ensemble, the flow of the narrative will be interrupted, guiding to unconvincing solutions and story patches, disrupting thus the suspension of disbelief. On the contrary, coherence in the narrative will also ensure proper character exposition. As Daiches (1960, p. 13) asserted, “Sometimes the character as we see him first is a shadowy and indeterminate creature, but after his reactions to a chronological series of events have been presented we feel that he is now a living personality.” Again, in order for this transformation to take place, the novelist needs to make sure that the reactions Daiches referred to, as well as their manner of presentation, occur convincingly. This requires adequate authorial knowledge of character. However, only a certain amount of such knowledge will make it to the text. The pedagogical approach proposed in this thesis is founded upon this very notion: the stage of Conceptualisation, which precedes that of Exposition, entails both the accumulation and the filtering of all data pertaining to the character’s identity. The author harvests all information but then is called to select those details that will result in accurate and interesting character exposition in the narrative. Forster (1974, pp. 57–58) similarly indicated that [P]eople in a novel can be understood completely by the reader, if the novelist wishes; their inner, as well as their outer life can be exposed…. The novelist is allowed to remember and understand everything, if it suits him. He knows all the hidden life. This ‘hidden’ life is what a novelist aims to virtually experience when she sees through her character’s eyes. Seemingly insignificant details may lead her to comprehend fundamental aspects of her textual nature, guiding her to form innovative, coherent plot decisions. Seger (1990) accordingly writes that The depth of a character has been compared to an iceberg. The audience or reader only sees the tip of the writer’s work— perhaps only 10 percent of everything the writer knows about the character. The writer needs to trust that all this work deepens the character, even if much of this information never appears directly in the script. (Seger, 1990, p. 2)

104  Character and the Author And Brayfield (1996) also proposes: The writer needs to imagine the character holistically, then select telling details from the picture as they are needed…. If you know the cast of your story the way you know living people – whole and usually beyond rational explanation, however much people chew each other over in absentia – you will be able to get them down on the page in a form which will seem lifelike to everyone. (Brayfield, 1996, p. 169) The author can never know real people in the intimate, microscopic way she understands her characters. For, as mentioned, she creates them ex nihilo, and as such is granted access to all their thoughts, emotions and doubts. This meticulous knowledge will manifest through the text. Consequently, the reader will also be able to understand, align and even empathise with them. As Harvey (1965, p. 32) pointed out, “Life allows only intrinsic knowledge of self, contextual knowledge of others; fiction allows both intrinsic and contextual knowledge of others.” On the other hand, as Forster warned, characters are fictional creations inside a textual construction, and if not handled with craftmanship, the entire foundation of the narrative becomes unstable. Indeed, by proposing that the novelist should surrender herself to her character’s conscience, I do not imply she should forget who is ‘in control.’ The novelist remains the conscious creator and the only decision-maker (Harvey, 1965). Subsequently, the novelist’s aim should not be to convince herself that the contents of her narrative are real, but rather to persuade the reader that they could be. Encapsulating this, Moore (1984) stated: Belief means that an actor treats things or persons as if they were what he wants the audience to believe they are. An actor knows that his fellow actor is not his father or an emperor, but he can treat him as his father or as an emperor. He can treat an object as if it were a fluttering bird. The ability of an actor to make his audience believe what he wants it to believe creates scenic truth. (Moore, 1984, p. 33) It all thus comes down to a game of symbolic embodiment and fanciful imagination, and our aim as writers is to unite the two ‘selves’ so that she both observes and evaluates at the same time. This process is the outcome of critical judgment and empathy in synergy. The author is constantly alert to see, feel and evaluate through another’s eyes in both hypothetical and realistic situations, and at the same time judge and reflect on such evaluations in omnipresence. Frequently, a character’s principles and viewpoints won’t coincide with her creator’s. The degree of the ability to adopt another’s viewpoint aiming to comprehend those driving forces behind motivations, actions

Character and the Author  105 and sentiments will ultimately define the degree to which the reader will choose to identify with, or at least comprehend the character’s behaviour. As Oatley (1994, p. 64) states, “[B]oth authors and readers experience … identifications. Emotions, ‘your own heart beating inside their clothes’, are mediated by a psychological process in which the reader (or writer) takes on characteristics of the fictional character.” In conclusion, the notion of the author ‘following’ her characters entails an intuitive introspection of incoherent narrative parts or creative decisions that do not quite lead to the desired conclusion, or feel realistic or consistent as expected.

5.4  Authors and Narrators Literary theory has put under the scope ideas that until then were taken for granted, endorsed critical thinking and set higher standards in the art of fiction-writing. Artistic craftsmanship began to be scrutinised and there emerged a wealth of analytical tools concerning the author, her intentions and her presence within the text. Today we come across well-established terms and distinctions such as the internal or external narrator, the implied author, the reliable or unreliable narrator etc. For instance, Booth (1961, pp. 70–71) believed that the author “[C]reates not simply an ideal, impersonal ‘man in general’ but an implied version of ‘himself’ that is different from the implied authors we meet in other men’s works” and that there should be a distinction between “the real author” and “the various versions of himself.” Scholes and Kellogg (1966) introduced the concept of the ‘histor’: The histor is the narrator as inquirer, constructing a narrative on the basis of such evidence as he has been able to accumulate. The histor is not a character in a narrative, but he is not exactly the author himself, either. He is a persona, a projection of the author’s empirical virtues. (Scholes and Kellogg, 1966, pp. 265–266) Similarly, Chatman (1978, pp. 146–158) expounds the concepts of direct presentation, mediated narration, real author, implied author, narrator, real reader, implied reader, narrate, introducing his own schema of the narrative text. As he writes: [The implied author is] is not the narrator, but rather the principle that invented the narrator, along with everything else in the narrative…. [T]he implied author can tell us nothing. He, or better, it has no voice, no direct means of communicating…. We can grasp the notion of implied author most clearly by comparing different narratives written by the same real author but presupposing different implied authors. (Chatman, 1978, p. 148)

106  Character and the Author Rimmon-Kenan (1983, pp. 86–105) distinguishes levels of narration into extradiegetic, diegetic and hypodiegetic. She also classifies narrators according to the degree of their textual participation into heterodiegetic and homodiegetic. And Currie (2010, pp. 69–70) holds the view that the difference between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ narrators lies within the distinct perspectives between the real novelist and the one the reader thinks is revealed through the novel. Some scholars have disputed the necessity of such categories. Currie (2010, p. 65) contends that a distinction between authors and narrators is futile, for as he writes, narrative-making and narrative-telling shouldn’t be seen as different processes. Similarly, Bordwell (2007, p. 128) considers Chatman’s schema as unnecessary, arguing that “To undergo the experience of a roller-coaster ride, I don’t have to imagine a ghostly intelligence standing between the engineer and me, shaping the thrills and nausea I feel. The very concept of a storyteller doesn’t entail a virtual storyteller of the sort that Chatman proposes. Overall, the debate over the usefulness of such classifications is not relevant to the author of fiction. The approaches to textual deconstruction and narrative analysis are many, each with its own merit and academic contribution. I do think that we can benefit from them as writers, insofar as our understanding of how our narratives can be perceived is concerned. I moreover endorse Atwood’s (2003) perception of the communication between author and reader: Messengers always exist in a triangular situation – the one who sends the message, the message-bearer, whether human or inorganic, and the one who receives the message. Picture, therefore, a triangle, but not a complete triangle: something more like an upside-down V. The writer and the reader are at the two lateral corners, but there’s no line joining them. Between them — whether above or below – is a third point, which is the written word, or the text, or the book, or the poem, or the letter, or whatever you would like to call it. This third point is the only point of contact between the other two. (Atwood, 2003, p. 113) Atwood’s account is simply descriptive of the author-reader contract. All that stands between the two is the text, and its elements are the only thing the author should be concerned about. At the same time, as discussed, the novelist conveys a part of her identity through the text but is not to be identified with it. In that respect, the novelist and the narrator shouldn’t define one another. The author is one entity, constructing the fictional world and its inhabitants. The narrator is the one telling the story. She may assume the role of one of the characters, or recount as an omnipresent storyteller. Let’s take a look at that.

Character and the Author  107 5.4.1  Point of View ‘Point of View’ (POV) refers to the mode of narration the author chooses to adopt in order to present the narrative’s events from one or more particular angles, either by presenting the character’s own perspective, or through the all-knowing narration of an omniscient storyteller. Many have dismissed the term ‘POV’ as not encompassing enough. For instance, Rimmon-Kenan (1983, pp. 71–73) considers it imprecise, as it attempts to treat the two separate questions of who sees versus who speaks as indistinguishable. She argues instead for the concept of ‘focalisation,’ separating it from narration altogether. Chatman (1978, pp. 151–152) thinks ‘POV’ to be ‘troublesome’ and distinguishes three aspects of POV – the perceptual, conceptual and that of interest – ­contending that the term cannot include them all at once. And Forster (1974, pp. 81–82) disputed the effectiveness of the device altogether, claiming that it is simply up to the dexterity of the writer to appear convincing through her narration, without having to adopt such methods for aesthetic purposes. I consider ‘POV’ to be concise enough to describe the function it serves. The term pertains to narrative mode and possession of information, entailing all aspects Chatman spoke of, and remains one of the most significant choices the author is called to make. As Percy Lubbock (1986) wrote, The whole intricate question of method, in the craft of fiction, I take to be governed by the question of point of view — the question of the relation in which the narrator stands to the story…. The story may be told so vivaciously that the presence of the minstrel is forgotten, and the scene becomes visible, peopled with the characters of the tale…. If the spell is weakened at any moment, the listener is recalled from the scene to the mere author before him, and the story rests only upon the author’s direct assertion. (Lubbock, 1968, p. 251) Similarly, Scholes and Kellogg (1966, pp. 240–241) argued that the primary function of POV is to control the narrative irony, which they defined as “a function of disparity” among the author-narrator, the character and the reader, whereby “lies the essence of narrative art.” The writers also challenged the notion that POV serves exclusively the author’s aesthetic purposes, arguing that it is the primary device with which a novelist’s work is formed, affecting the narrating language and the way light is cast upon characters and events. Furthermore, as they added, it is a perceptive apparatus for the reader, as it helps shape her impressions and stances towards the work. Subsequently, the choice and consistent implementation of POV ensures suspension of disbelief. The author is faced with a task that will

108  Character and the Author ultimately define her work’s viability: she is called to appoint her narrators and decide what they will see. Moreover, POV is explicatory of how the narrator holds and reveals knowledge of events (Tilford, 1968, p. 150), of how she perceives other characters and their predispositions and intentions, and ultimately how close she stands in relation to the reader. Similarly, Boulter (2007, p. 150) suggests that thinking consists of: viewpoint, pertaining to a character’s standpoints and access to information; voice, which reflects the character-narrator’s unique way of transmitting information to the reader; and distance, referring to the extent of the reader’s emotional alignment to the character in question. In conclusion, I suggest that POV serves the following two functions: (a) it acts as a character expositor, revealing subjective interpretations and justifying emotional reactions, and (b) it defines the degree of alignment, both cognitive and emotional, between character and reader. Let’s now look at types of POV. 5.4.1A Omniscient The oldest and erstwhile predominant form of narration, the omniscient POV is still regarded by many as the most reliable and prestigious of all (Friedman, 1955; Gardner, 2001). Omniscient narrators have unrestricted access to the thoughts and emotions of every character and prior knowledge of forthcoming events, as well as their outcomes. The omniscient narrator can also make all sorts of inferences and comments, and offer explanations on characters and events. Since the use of omniscient POV characterised an era of canon formation, many scholars still regard it as the most effective mode of narration. Gardner (2001, p. 157) goes as far as to embark upon a polemic against first and third subjective, dismissing them as less sophisticated and even gossipy. The omniscient POV offers the reader a panoramic view of the fictional world. Gardner’s assertion of its infallibility may be challenged though since omniscient, as used in classic literature, carries alongside it the author’s own prejudices, depicted in her indirect social and ethical commentary. As Mullan (2006, p. 43) indicates, “Omniscience … is a way of describing potential knowledge rather than practical revelation.” Finally, if not properly mastered, the illusion of the objectivity of an all-knowing omniscient narrator automatically deprives the reader of the opportunity to access subjective accounts which shed light in the intricate threads and complexity of human nature. If there are scholars out there who consider such access as a ‘peephole,’ I cannot possibly share their view. Examples of omniscient POV from canonical literature include ­Nathaniel Hawthorne’s (1992) The Scarlet Letter, Leo Tolstoy’s (1993) War and Peace, and Victor Hugo’s (1955) Les Misérables.

Character and the Author  109 Omniscient POV has evolved and accordingly adjusted to contemporary fiction. Friedman (1955) speaks of ‘editorial’ and ‘neutral’ omniscient distinguishing by the degree of domination of the authorial presence: The characteristic mark, then, of Editorial Omniscience is the presence of authorial intrusions and generalizations about life, manners, and morals, which may or may not be explicitly related to the story at hand…. At any rate, it is a natural consequence of the editorial attitude that the author will not only report what goes on in the minds of his characters, but he will also criticize it. (Friedman, 1955, p. 1171) According to Friedman’s analysis, editorial omniscience refers to the narrative style adopted by classical novelists who guided the reader towards certain evaluations while providing commentaries on the ethos of their times. With the subsequent shift of focus from society to the individual and the particular aspects of human nature, the necessity for modifications became clear (Daiches, 1960, pp. 6–7). Friedman on the other hand (1955, p. 1179) mourns the authorial absorption by the text, speaking of an equal extinction of literature, since he considers the emphatic authorial presence a prerequisite for textual vividness and reader comprehension. I argue that it is consistency, particularity and creative flexibility that render a narrative appealing and interesting to the modern reader, not the constant intervention by the narrator. Additionally, expansion and reformation of art and its manifestations is a true sign of evolution. As Bruce Morrissette (1962) underlined, If there is a single key idea here, it is that of the evolutionary nature of artistic growth. Evolution leads the investigator back into the past from which it emerges, and calls for a setting up of perspectives on the present…. The twentieth century is the first to see general acceptance of the view that art evolves, and that art which does not change or evolve, dies. (Morrissette, 1962, p. 2) Life can be regarded as a mosaic of liaisons, bifurcations and outcomes of human relationships, shaped and defined by individuals. The entire narrative of The Course of Love (de Botton, 2017) is based on this principle. When Rabih and Kirsten meet, they have already been shaped into who they are by their past experience. The course of their relationship forms them anew and reshapes them, their conflicts arising as elements of their moulded selves collide, and when they overcome their obstacles, their individual characteristics have crystallised into new orders.

110  Character and the Author Moody’s text depicts a very realistic ‘slice’ of Ben Hood’s fictional life, one that portrays the complications, restrictions and social etiquette of a rural American town in the seventies, where marriage was a natural outcome, and the ordinariness of life not quite so expectedly ordinary. The narrative has remained anthropocentric and the images have become representational. Moody simply ‘zooms’ into the scene rather than describe his view of the actions, remaining impartial. At a later chapter, Elena Hood’s perception of the same family is proffered via a simple visit to the fridge: The order was impeccable. First Wendy, then Benjamin, then Elena carried her plate to the table and returned to the refrigerator in search of a beverage. After a long, fruitless investigation, Wendy settled on pasteurized, homogenized, vitamin D-enriched milk. As Wendy held out the milk carton for her father, who accepted it and poured himself a glass – it would sit next to the scotch-on-therocks – Elena concluded that her daughter and husband each looked into the refrigerator in the same way. Hopefully. While she and Paul recognized what limited offerings were concealed there. (Moody, 1998, pp. 66–67) Returning to Friedman’s (1955, p. 1173) distinction, in neutral omniscience, the author is still there to report and transmit, albeit without the use of direct interventions and commentary. She will still, however, describe and analyse the events in her own voice: “The mental states and the settings which evoke them are narrated indirectly as if they have already occurred — discussed, analyzed, and explained — rather than presented scenically as if they were occurring now.” The adjustment of omniscience did not automatically signify the perishing of the author, as Friedman alleges. Instead, she has become invisible, substituting her subjective imprints within the narrative with the sense of upcoming realism that was to dominate the next century. By withdrawing the emphasis of her presence, the novelist succeeded in achieving simplicity and realistic attribution, liberating the reader from the rigid framework of restricted interpretation, thus revealing the innumerable possibilities of human nature to her. A character that is introduced exclusively through external perspectives can only be grasped in fragments. Failing to reach a deeper level of understanding, the creator only touches on those aspects that promote her own ideas and plot advancement (Watkins, 1999). Watkins outlines this thread of thought as follows: The imaginer often assimilates and reduces the character’s actions to the set of meanings which are important to the ego, thus failing to allow the character’s presence and point of view to de-center the

Character and the Author  111 habitual stance of the ego. The imaginer too quickly assumes she understands what a character wants or feels, without so much as attempting to ask. It is such assumptions that change a basic telos of the experience of imagining itself from counteracting egocentricity to sustaining it. In the latter instance the imaginal scene and its people become servants to the usual, most powerful point of view. In the former, as a character’s thoughts, feelings and motivations become known from its point of view, it is freed from being but a prop to the habitually central voice. (Watkins, 1999, pp. 117–118) This does not render the author absent or irrelevant to her text. On the contrary, it enhances the trust in the author-reader contract, ascertaining suspension of disbelief and the consent to consciously take part in a make-believe game. It is interesting to see how swiftly Moody changes the focus on his narration when it comes to describing Mike Williams’s death. It is the first time his omniscient narrator acknowledges himself, momentarily pulling the reader from the narrative flow. Okay, the time has come in this account for a characterization of the mind of God. Just briefly, for thematic reasons. Happily there’s no need to concern ourselves with this mind as it has expressed itself directly – because it hasn’t, really. (Moody, 1998, p. 205) Later on, Moody’s omniscient narrator comments on Mike: Look, he was not a brilliant kid. He had not scored well on standardised tests or on any other tests. He was a little lazy, in fact. Mostly he tried to sit next to Mona Henderson and copy answers. But he knew about live wires, about the lore of live wires. So he made a wide berth several hundred feet around the moiling electrical field and then back onto that thoroughfare, Valley Road, back onto his trail. He wasn’t lonely now. He was full of life. (Moody, 1998, p. 211) In this passage, the narrator addresses the reader directly. His invitation to ‘look’ acts as a warning for the forthcoming tragedy. Moody’s intentions aside, the passage could survive without the emphasis of the narrator’s perspective. The evocation to the reader could be altogether omitted, as Moody has been consistently convincing in persuading her to follow his narrator through the narrative thus far. The effect, however, cannot be missed. It is a well-crafted omen for the plot climax.

112  Character and the Author Standing panoramically outside the fictional world, the contemporary omniscient narrator still has access to all characters’ thoughts and feelings, as well as to knowledge of future events. But rather than acting as a judge, she embeds herself in the narrative, allowing its thread to unfold in an unbiased manner or, as Harvey (1965, p. 73) pointed out, she becomes “part of the total network of relationships between character and reader which make up the human context.” At the end of the day, the reader will form her own opinions and make her own judgements based on her interpretations (Atwood, 2003, pp. 98–99). The evolution of omniscience therefore has allowed for deeper submergence into the character’s conscience, but it has also proffered direct and often simultaneous access into them. Friedman himself (1955, p. 1174) admits that omniscient is predominantly characterised by the author’s imminent intervention between reader and story, projecting her view of the scene and setting exclusively. The contemporary novelist, on the other hand, lets her characters narrate their own tales, without attempting to speak on their behalf. Even in contemporary omniscient narrations, the author avoids monopolising reader attention with offers of continuous judgement, and the Ice Storm is a brilliant example of Moody’s fine technique. For the most part, he views his characters panoramically yet close enough to familiarise the reader with their mental states, motivations and perspectives. Each chapter follows one of his protagonists: Benjamin, Wendy, Elena and Paul Hood. Mike Williams’s death is narrated by the distant voice announcing itself as the ‘God-like’ narrator. Yet, in the end: Or that’s how I remember it, anyway. Me. Paul. The gab. That’s what I remember. And this story really ends right at that spot. I have to leave Benjamin. There with that news, with a wish for reconciliation that he will bury in himself; I have to leave Elena, my mom, whom I have never really understood; I have to leave Wendy, uncertain, with one arm around the dog, and I have to leave myself – Paul – on the cusp of my adulthood, at the end of that annus mirabilis where comic books were indistinguishable from the truth, at the beginning of my confessions. I have to leave him and his family there because after all this time, after twenty years, it’s time I left. (Moody, 1998, p. 279) The revelation that the story has been narrated by Paul from the very beginning should not come as a shock, as Moody has been leaving cues for the reader all along. His very introduction reads (p. 1), “So let me dish you this comedy about a family I knew when I was growing up. There’s a part for me in this story, like there always is for a gossip, but more on that later.” The author masters the interchange between

Character and the Author  113 first person – which dominates the text – and omniscient so subtly, that whilst the shifts are unexpected and can even momentarily pull us out of the story, the textual coherence is not compromised. Furthermore, reverting to the previous analysis on authors and narrators, the omniscient narrator arising between first person recitals manifests as intermediate and can’t be mistaken for Moody’s own voice, which remains concealed and skilfully irrelevant through the entire novel. A prime example of well-mastered contemporary omniscient can be found in The Course of Love (de Botton, 2017). The author presents his two protagonists in wonderful clarity and an all-knowing superiority that allows the reader to understand the characters and the entire purpose of the work (which can be seen as a philosophical view on long-term monogamous relationships) not simply through the subjectivity of their empirical interpretations, but also the dynamics that have begotten and shaped their bond. De Botton also includes conclusions and encapsulations that derive from the incidents and circumstances that manifest throughout the relationship, but these are not presented as ethical or critical commentaries on the characters themselves; rather they are deductions on human nature itself and appeal to the reader directly. In conclusion, the adaptation of the omniscient mode of narration in the contemporary novel did not nullify the latter’s presence or function. Instead, it provided the reader with flexibility of interpretation; it also guided the author towards subtler, yet equally sufficient methods of narrating a world she is to know everything about. Interested in a deeper level of understanding and exposition, novelists allowed omniscience to evolve, rendering the authorial presence discreet thus bringing reader and text one step closer. 5.4.1B  First Person As stated earlier, the de-centralisation of the author and the shift of focus to the human situation as depicted by the contemporary fictional character is indicative of the wider change in literature which manifested in the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1960, Daiches observed that [W]riters have realized that a psychologically accurate account of what a man is at any given moment can be given neither in terms of static description of his character nor in terms of a group of chronologically arranged reactions to a series of circumstances. They have become interested in those aspects of consciousness which cannot be viewed as a progression of individual and self-existing moments, but which are essentially dynamic rather than static in nature and are independent of the given moment. (Daiches, 1960, p. 15)

114  Character and the Author It is this shift in the relationship between author and character that has driven many novelists to adopt alternative viewpoint techniques. Watkins (1999, pp. 124, 126) attributes this creative shift to the radical changes in the twentieth century, such as the war, the emergence of conflicting ideologies, the rapid advancement of science, technology and psychology, concluding that “[T]hus the author had to find a different place to stand in relation to the characters…. With a decline in omniscience there was a heightened sensitivity to character.” The realistic narration of events from a first person viewpoint can convey a sense of autobiographical storytelling. The more precise and vivid the narrator’s descriptions, the more encompassing and multidimensional the picture will be for the reader. In fact, as Tilford argued (1968, p. 307), skilful first person narrative rendered the differences between fictional and real biographies insignificant, even in fantastical genres. Indeed, first person-narrated stories can be regarded as fictional autobiographies, for they often recount a character’s life through her eyes; the narrative is most often an accumulation of events as she experiences them. Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (2007) is a very indicative example. Yet first person narration is not exclusively linked to the biographic immediacy Tilford speaks of. A narrator may be conveying her own life-story or reporting as a witness. Friedman (1955), for example, distinguishes two different functions of first person narrators: that of the protagonist and that of the witness. Similarly, Scholes and Kellogg (1966, p. 256) explained that The eye-witness can be employed in a wide variety of ways. His eyes can be turned inward so that he is his own subject matter or outward so that the other characters or the social scene itself become the dominant interest. First person POV is primarily characterised by the subjective interpretation of one or – in certain cases, such as in Waters’s (2002) Fingersmith, or Kundera’s (1992) The Joke – more narrating characters. Subsequently, the narrator can only convey with certainty her own thoughts and emotions, unfolding the narrative’s thread under the individual prism of her observations, perception and judgment – what Friedman (1955, p. 1174) calls “the wandering periphery.” Information about the mental states and motivations of the other characters can only be accessed and assessed through the narrator’s inferences. Tilford (1968) advises that Authors have to use all manner of devices so that the narrator can report, as necessary, other characters’ thoughts and events he does not see: intercepted letters, overheard conversations, other characters’

Character and the Author  115 accounts, and often the manifestation of considerable naiveté on the part of the narrator. (Tilford, 1968, p. 308) First person inferencing does not threaten the credibility of the narrative, as long as it takes place within the frames of consistency and logical deduction. Successful presumptions establish the narrator’s idiosyncratic attributes and help the plot to unfold naturally. On the other hand, mistaken presumptions enhance dramatic irony since they trigger activity in character relations. Furthermore, they display the narrator’s own reliability or unreliability, to be discussed later. A great example of misinterpretations of motivations and misconceptions can be found in Fingersmith (2002). The story is narrated by the two protagonists, Sue and Maud. Waters creates a strong suspenseful drama presenting both versions of the same story, where the complexity of ethics and the significance of inner and outer conflict build a longitudinal historical drama. Let’s take, for example, the incident when Sue passes to Maud the letter Richard Rivers has given her, believing it to be a fake reference note from her imaginary ex-mistress. In reality, the letter is a conspiratorial note to Maud. Sue stands observing her as she reads it: She rose and broke the wax, then walked to the window to hold the paper to the light. She stood a long time looking at the curling hand, and once sneaked a glance at me; and my heart beat a little fast then, to think she might have noticed something queer there. But it was not that: for I saw at last that her hand, which held the paper, trembled; and I guessed that she had no more idea what a proper character was like than I did; and was only figuring out what she should say. (Waters, 2002, p. 68) Yet, from Maud’s POV: I have thought myself as cool as he. I am not, I am not, I feel her watching—just as he describes!—and grow fearful. I stand with the letter in my hand, then am aware all at once that I have stood too long. If she should have seen—! I fold the paper, once, twice, thrice—finally it will not fold at all. I do not yet know that she cannot read or write so much as her own name. (Waters, 2002, p. 244) Each character projects her fears, filtered through her own intentions, to the other. They both worry about having their plans exposed. Sue cannot

116  Character and the Author read. She has no idea what that letter truly contains. Sue is threatened by her own misinterpretations, Maud by the knowledge she possesses. Similarly, when Rivers arrives at Briar, Sue misinterprets his interactions with each of them, misled by her own idea of the supposed plan: He made a bow, and went to the door; then, when he was almost out of it he seemed to remember me, and went through a kind of pantomime, of patting at his pockets, looking for coins. He came up with a shilling, and beckoned me close to take it. ‘Here you are Sue,’ he said. He lifted my hand and pressed the shilling in it. It was a bad one. ‘All well?’ he added softly, so that Maud should not overhear. I said, ‘Oh, thank you, sir!’ And I made another curtsey, and winked. (Waters, 2002, p. 106) In reality, it is Rivers and Maud that engage in pretence, plotting against Sue. As Maud narrates: When those eyes meet mine, they are veiled and blameless. But when they meet Richard’s, I see the leap of knowledge or understanding that passes between them; and I cannot look at her. For of course, though she knows much, what she has is a counterfeit knowledge, and worthless; and her satisfaction in the keeping of it—in the nursing of what she supposes her secret—is awful to me. She does not know she is the hinge of all our scheme, the point about which our plot turns; she thinks I am that point. She does not suspect that, in seeming to mock me, Richard mocks her: that after he has turned to her in private, perhaps to smile, perhaps to grimace, he turns to me, and smiles and grimaces in earnest. (Waters, 2002, p. 264) As mentioned, the shift from omniscient to alternative modes has been met with suspicion by some scholars. For example, Gardner (2001) advises against its use, alleging that First person allows the writer to write as he talks, and this may be an advantage for intelligent people who have interesting speech patterns and come from a culture with a highly developed oral tradition, such as American blacks, Jews, and southern or down-east Yankee yarn-spinners; but first person does not force the writer to recognize that written speech has to make up for the loss of facial expression, gesture, and the like, and the usual result is not good writing but only writing less noticeably bad. (Gardner, 2001, p. 155) Gardner’s statement is misleading as to the purpose as well as the opportunity first person narration offers both the author and the reader.

Character and the Author  117 Unlike the claim that it echoes the author’s own voice, it requires that it is adjusted to the idiosyncrasy and unique speech of each narrating character. The author’s voice must dissipate so that the character’s voice emerges dominant and unmistakably clear. In fact, first person POV poses one of the greatest challenges in modern narration, even more so for those writers that choose to employ it frequently. Perhaps this is precisely the point Gardner is trying to make. However, as with everything else, skills can only be mastered through experimentation and practice. Furthermore, Gardner’s view seems to overlook the fact that first person narration is one of the most effective ways to achieve realism. As Scholes and Kellogg (1966) explained, We can almost go as far as to say that the natural form of mimetic narrative is eye-witness and first-person. Circumstantiality, verisimilitude, and many more of the qualities which we recognize as identifying characteristics of realism in narrative are all natural functions of the eye-witness point of view. (Scholes and Kellogg, 1966, p. 250) Indeed, first person POV is considered a proximity-enhancing device by many (Keen, 2006). For instance, Mullan (2006) suggests that its function serves to attract the former’s sympathy for a less-than-perfect character and her misdeeds. This is evident in Fingersmith (2002), where the two protagonists reveal, along with their unique view of the story, their motivations and justifications for their deeds and choices. An ‘objective’ narrator may have presented a different account: that of two ruthless young women who, inspired by greed or selfishness, attempt to trap each other, only to be purged by guilt, and redeemed by the chain of events themselves. Yet Waters’s narration offers a completely different perspective. The story begins with Sue’s account, which is more discursive than apologetic, and uses the past tense to give an account of her lie so far: My name, in those days, was Susan Trinder. People called me Sue. I know the year I was born in, but for many years I did not know the date, and took my birthday at Christmas. I believe I am an orphan. My mother I know is dead. But I never saw her, she was nothing to me. I was Mrs Sucksby’s child, if I was anyone’s; and for father I had Mr Ibbs, who kept the locksmith’s shop, at Lant Street, in the Borough, near to the Thames. (Waters, 2002, p. 3) Maud’s narration (2002, p. 180), on the other hand, is explanatory and defensive, in the present tense, following Sue’s incarceration in the madhouse: “The start, I think I know too well. It is the first of my mistakes.” After reciting her personal history and the reasons that drove her to act

118  Character and the Author as she did, Maud closes her chapter with a confession (2002, p. 204): “[I] am inside the cabinet, and long to get out … I am seventeen when Richard Rivers comes to Briar with a plot and a promise and the story of a gullible girl who can be fooled into helping me do it.” Finally, first person narration allows the author to enhance the sense of the character’s originality, through the filtering of her own perspectives. Returning to the concept of defamiliarisation, Lodge (2002) describes it as entailing the unique presentation of otherwise familiar and common concepts and images through the unique prism of the reader; or, in accordance with Shklovsky (1990), as if they were happening or were observed for the very first time. In conclusion, the use of first person narration allowed authors to explore alternative ways of conveying the inner thoughts and emotions of a character, enhancing the reader’s experience and achieving closer proximity between her and the narrative. As Watkins (1999, p. 136) says, “The decline of the omniscient narrator in fiction— often it was the author’s voice— did not entail the end of narrators. Rather narrators joined the ranks of characters. They too became fallible, their perspectives assailable.” 5.4.1C  Third Person Refined by Flaubert in Madame Bovary (2001), who aimed to render his emphatic authorial presence invisible, the third person narrator initially constituted the evolved mode of omniscience, entailing the account of the observer that was nonetheless no longer impersonal. Morrissette (1962, p. 4) illustrated this beautifully: It was his effort to remove himself from the narrative that led Flaubert to the discovery that if the omniscient author is eliminated, the only remaining basis for the “point of view” that justifies the text has to be the consciousness of someone: a character in the novel, or a plausible observer placed at the realistic level of the action within the novel. (Morrissette, 1962, p. 4) Third person POV is classified by degrees of penetration and aesthetic distance. It can serve as a type of omniscient POV (Friedman, 1955; Tilford, 1968) or an alternative option to first person narration, substituted by the third person pronoun (Tilford, 1968). It can also be further segmented into third person limited, third person limited close and third person multiple. The terms ‘limited’ and ‘close’ refer to the author’s access and proximity to the character’s mental states, and the distance that is created respectively between character and reader. In the case of third person limited, which Tilford (1968, p. 311) describes as “restraining of omniscience,” the author limits her access to

Character and the Author  119 only one of her characters accordingly conveying information. The narrator can still report facts outside of the character’s temporality, events to come, as well as the actions of other characters which the surveyed character has no way of knowing, enhancing thus dramatic irony. Lubbock (1968) said it best: The seeing eye is with somebody in the book, but its vision is reinforced; the picture contains more, becomes richer and fuller, because it is the author’s as well as his creature’s both at once. Nobody notices, but in fact there are now two brains behind the eye; and one of them is the author’s who adopts and shares the position of his creature, and at the same time supplements his wit. (Lubbock, 1968, p. 258) Examples include Cormac McCarthy’s (2006) The Road, and George Orwell’s (2004) 1984. In third person limited close, the author abandons her all-knowing status and assumes the identity of the character. Similar to first person, she becomes occupied by the mind-frame of one of the characters, observing, deducing and as such narrating through her eyes. Essentially, it is the third person pronoun that comes to substitute for the first, although Lubbock (1968, p. 257) also highlighted that “[T]here no longer stretches, between the narrator and the events of which he speaks, a certain tract of time, across which the past must appear in a more or less distant perspective.” Objective presentation is once more replaced by subjective explanation and the conveyance of owned experience, and the author again assumes the role of an actress embodying her character, ‘living’ through her textual world. Without calling it as such, Friedman (1955) explains: [T]he reader perceives the action as it filters through the consciousness of one of the characters involved, yet perceives it directly as it impinges upon that consciousness, thus avoiding that removal to a distance necessitated by retrospective first-person narration…. Mental awareness is thus dramatized directly instead of being reported and explained indirectly by the narrator’s voice, much in the same way that words and gestures may be dramatized directly (scene) rather than being summarized by the narrator (panorama). (Friedman, 1955, pp. 1164–1165) Pondering over the concept of direct dramatisation, it should be noted that in both direct and indirect discourse the voice of the third person limited narrator needs to echo that of the character, not the novelist. In other words, in the emergence of both dialogue and the reported thoughts, the reader must discern and recognise the character’s own personality as exposited by speech and other parameters (to be discussed later on).

120  Character and the Author A brilliant example of third person close is Coetzee’s (1999) Disgrace, where David Lurie’s character emerges in clear self-reflection: That is his temperament. His temperament is not going to change, he is too old for that. His temperament is fixed, set. The skull, followed by the temperament: the two hardest parts of the body. Follow your temperament. It is not a philosophy, he would not dignify it with that name. It is a rule, like the Rule of St Benedict. He is in good health, his mind is clear. By profession he is, or has been, a scholar, and scholarship still engages, intermittently, the core of him. He lives within his income, within his temperament, within his emotional means. Is he happy? By most measurements, yes, he believes he is. However, he has not forgotten the last chorus of Oedipus: Call no man happy until he is dead. (Coetzee, 1990, pp. 2–3) When Melanie seeks temporary refuge in his house, his thoughts on the way she settles become explicitly evident: When he returns at noon, she is up, sitting at the kitchen table, eating toast and honey and drinking tea. She seems thoroughly at home…. She gets up, carries her cup and plate to the sink (but does not wash them), turns to face him…. He is vexed, irritated. She is behaving badly, getting away with too much; she is learning to exploit him and will probably exploit him further. (Coetzee, 1999, p. 36) And later on, when he contemplates his own part on her daughter’s chosen path: He nods absentmindedly. Attractive, he is thinking, yet lost to men. Need he reproach himself, or would it have worked out like that anyway? From the day his daughter was born he has felt for her nothing but the most spontaneous, most unstinting love. Impossible she has been unaware of it. Has it been too much, that love? Has she found it a burden? Has it pressed down on her? Has she given it a darker reading? (Coetzee, 1999, p. 99) Coetzee establishes Lurie as a passion-driven scholar from the very beginning. Lurie’s idiosyncratic stamp is consistently maintained throughout the novel, via the uniqueness of his voice and those particular characteristics ascribed to his fictional personality. In some cases, an author may choose to narrate through the perspective of more than one character. She may still designate one distinct

Character and the Author  121 protagonist, but will use a number of other characters to tell the story through their own subjective voice. The narrative thus becomes a net of interconnected mind-frames, where individual, linear parts complete the narrative mosaic. Examples of third person multiple viewpoints include Lisa McInerney’s The Glorious Heresies (2016) and Kundera’s (1998) Farewell Waltz. Third person multiple narration allowed the novelist to experiment with her own so-called disappearance, exploring the human existence like never before. Moreover, it contributed to an encompassing conception and as such exposition of the fictional character. Recounting a series of events through the unique perceptions of many fictional individuals, the novelist allowed them to become rounded and multidimensional, enhancing the reader’s participation. Furthermore, it ensured the author’s impartiality towards her characters, rendering such polyphony as multifarious as never before. Here is a great elaboration by Kenneth Burke (1962): [T]o consider A from the point of view of B is, of course, to use B as a perspective upon A … It is by the approach through a variety of perspectives that we establish a character’s reality. If we are in doubt as to what an object is, for instance, we deliberately try to consider it in as many different terms as its nature permits … [W]e could say that characters possess degrees of being in proportion to the variety of perspectives from which they can with justice be perceived. (Burke, 1962, p. 504) And Harvey (1965, p. 52) believed that it is precisely such polyphony of perspectives that renders the novel different from any other art form and the ‘reality’ of characters a legitimate concept. The novelist is therefore given the opportunity to present her cast through many different angles. The illusion of this implemented subjectivity implies the same sense of the so-called objectivity of the omniscient narrator, albeit without the novelist’s emphatic presence interrupting the narrative flow. 5.4.2  The Choice of Point of View The list discussed earlier is certainly not exhaustive, and the main characteristics governing each POV type are always adjusted by creativity and craftsmanship. In fact, many novelists may choose to alternate between viewpoint modes. For instance, Maggie O’ Farrell’s often interchanges between first person and multiple third POV (This Must be the Place, 2017; After You’d Gone, 2001). Coetzee, on the other hand, uses third close to such a degree that the narrative bears the subjective imprint of first person narration. And then, there are stories, or part of stories,

122  Character and the Author written in second person. Examples include Italo Calvino’s (1992) If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Tom Robbins’s (2002) Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, Julian Barnes’s (2018) The Only Story and Maggie O’Farrell’s (2018) memoir I am, I am, I am: Seventeen Brushes with Death. As already explained, the choice of POV will determine the reader’s alignment with the fictional character. Friedman (1955, p. 1180) makes a similar point, arguing that the suitability of each narration mode will establish, the achievement of certain effects that will inevitably maintain the illusion of the suspension of disbelief. Irrespective of the author’s dominating viewpoint, the perspectives and emotional framework of the other characters will emerge as the action unfolds. The main narrator’s POV defines and sometimes even denudes the fictional personalities of her surrounding cast, if the author so wishes, even if this occurs under the subjective light of the narrator’s own interpretations. This is what Watkins (1999, p. 118) calls “Degree of complexity of perspective of character,” according to which character can be revealed from an external perspective, an internal one, or an alternation between both. The importance of consistency is once again evident and achieved when the novelist maintains her narrator’s perspective within the scene, without sudden shifts in either degree or distance. This is often referred to informally as ‘head-hopping’ and can be a problem, especially in third person narration, if the reader is required to continuously jump from one internal perspective to the other without the chance to breathe. I’m not implying that art should conform to any set of rigid rules suggested by textbooks or academic theories. It’s not a dogma, and to a substantial degree, its evolution depends on the creative defiance of such ‘rules.’ Rather, our focus should be steered towards the reason behind those suggestions. Experimentation is the begetter of progress and can perfect a mastered skill and once our choices are defined not simply by artistic inspiration but also by crafting reasoning, we can leave our own signature through the impact and recognition of our writing style. 5.4.3  On Reliable and Unreliable Narrators In his essay, The Doer and the Deed, Margolin (1986) analyses the narrative process according to which, Truthfulness and completeness mean that all details of the reported act known to the reporter or at least believed by him to be true are mentioned, and none is omitted, replaced or transposed…. If the reader does not know what the reporter actually knows/believes, the alethic dimension is truncated. However, if he does know, a whole array of implications can immediately be drawn about the reporter: honest, truthful, exaggerator, liar, one-sided, etc. (Margolin, 1986, p. 221)

Character and the Author  123 As it emerges, the intentions and the conveyance of the narrator’s experiences will define the reader’s allegiance, as long as they convince her of their ingenuity and congruence. The reader will therefore infer the narrator’s credibility and motivations, and will determine her cognitive and emotional alignment to her. She will then decide whether the narrator is reliable or not as per her conclusions upon joining the pieces of the narrative mosaic together. Those pieces will emerge from the narrator’s own account, the actions of the other characters, as well as the plot twists. The term ‘reliable’ refers to the narrator who is believed to give an honest account of the fictional events, unburdened by biases, partiality or self-interests. Harvey (1965, p. 75) defined reliable narrators as “[T] he spokesmen of reality— not the reality of our world but the reality as it figures in the world of the novel.” Respectively, ‘unreliable’ is the narrator whose attribution of events appears unconvincing or distorted by the impact of strong emotions, personal prejudices and the urge to justify her choices. Rimmon-Kenan (1983, p. 100) considers the unreliable narrator “[O]ne whose rendering of the story and/or commentary on it the reader has reasons to suspect” and attributes such unreliability to “limited knowledge, personal involvement and his problematic value-scheme.” Examples of unreliable narrators are Humbert Humbert, in Nabokov’s (2004) Lolita; Holden Caulfield in J.D. Salinger’s (1994) The Catcher in the Rye; Dr Faraday in Waters’s (2009) The Little Stranger; and Tony Webster in Barnes’s (2012) The Sense of an Ending. Phelan (2005, pp. 49–53) initiates a taxonomy of unreliability, introducing the following categories: misreporting, misreading, misevaluating, underreporting, underreading and underregarding, which he correspondingly connects to character and event, knowledge and perceptive abilities, and morals and evaluation. The purpose of his taxonomy is to clarify the misconception that the narrative and its elements in their entirety should be condemned by a single and rigid framework of unreliability or lack thereof, proposing instead that they should be evaluated in terms of the text’s interchanging parts. Yet any narrator that is assigned an active role inside the text will live through, and as such narrate, the events she experiences according to her own motivations, subjectivity and personal prejudices, much like a real person would. The last source of unreliability in Rimmon-Kenan’s proposition is quite indicative and at this point, it’s worth examining what renders a value-scheme problematic. This is not to imply there are no universal ethics that surpass the subjectivity of cultural boundaries. However, the reader isn’t presented with an already tried and condemned character, but rather has the chance to assess her justifications, motivations and viewpoint. In other words, the author enters the unreliable narrator’s mind-frame, exposing the events through that particular prism, leaving any moral judgements to the reader alone. As Booth

124  Character and the Author (1961, p. 159) indicated, unreliability does not necessarily derive from the narrator’s intention to lie, but rather her misconceptions of herself and her surrounding reality. Rimmon-Kenan (1983) brings another point of focus to attention: When the views of other characters consistently clash with the narrator’s, suspicion may arise in the reader’s mind; and when the narrator’s language contains internal contradictions, double-edged images, and the like, it may have a boomerang effect, undermining the reliability of its user. (Rimmon-Kenan, 1983, p. 101) And for Scholes and Kellogg (1966, p. 263), the unreliable narrator “lends an especially ironical cast to an entire narrative, laying on the reader a special burden of enjoyable ratiocination, as he seeks to understand what the character telling the story cannot himself comprehend.” It is important to ponder over this last phrase. Whilst many would claim that the unreliable narrator is intentionally misleading, Scholes and Kellogg’s proposition for lack of comprehension encapsulates the principle of character creation perfectly. Encaged inside her own subjectivity, the unreliable narrator fails to understand the social, ethical or intellectual bifurcations of her experience, conveying them through the misshapen prism of her own justifications and deductions. In Lolita (2004), Humbert Humbert’s narration reveals a superficial admittance of how his actions go against what is perceived as ‘socially acceptable.’ The reader, however, can discern the self-victimisation and almost complacency through his subjective attribution of the events. At a respective reliable narration, the logical sequence of inferencing would be: Humbert Humbert’s being hurt in the past has led to Humbert Humbert becoming an eternal romantic on a perpetual siege for youth and affection, leading to Lolita being portrayed as an immature, selfish nymphet who has turned this erudite man’s torture into her business. A reconstruction like this, that would make perfect sense in the case of a different text, misses the entire point of the story in this case. Murray’s schema of identification is completely shifted here: recognition and alignment towards Humber almost happens instantly; for this exact reason though, the concept of allegiance (or lack thereof) is suspended. Nabokov’s spectacular narration renders Humbert one of the most ambiguous fictional portraits in the history of literature, and it’s the complexity of his profile that creates a strong imprint in the reader’s mind. Similarly, In Disgrace (1999), Lurie gives his own version of the events, which are quite particular comparing to what everybody else sees. When his lawyer asks him about the allegations against him, he responds (p. 55), “True enough. I was having an affair with the girl.”

Character and the Author  125 What Lurie perceives as an ‘affair,’ is nothing less than rape for the other characters. Yet Lurie is not an unreliable narrator per se. Another prime example is Sue in Fingersmith (2002). The first of the two protagonists to be introduced, she convinces the reader to follow her through the supposed conception and evolution thereof of her scheming against Maud, only to reveal that her perception of reality was a false one. Sue is indeed an unreliable narrator, albeit in her own ignorance – what Mullan (2006, pp. 50–52) refers to as the ‘inadequate narrator.’ Unreliable narration constitutes a valuable tool for the novelist who wishes to explore human nature in its full possibilities and potential. As Scholes and Kellogg (1966, pp. 254–265) warned, Unreliability itself requires a fairly thoroughgoing conception of reliability before it can be recognized and exploited in fiction. Its frequent use in modern fiction is also an aspect of the modern author’s desire to make the reader participate in the act of creation, The subjectivity that characterises all human beings, as prototypes to the fictional character, renders unreliability a powerful device in the attribution of realism in the contemporary novel. The manifestation of the unreliable narrator is indicative of human complexity, allowing the reader to creatively participate in the reconstruction of the narrative, by widening the frame of her hypotheses.

5.5  Summary of Conclusions The purpose of this chapter was to analyse notions of authorial identity, intentions and function. As I argued, the artistic shift that extricated her emphatic presence from the text, rendering her discreet, fathomed the range for reader participation and allowed for deeper explorations into the human condition. Moreover, the raison d’être of the novelist should not be defined by purposes of didacticism and moral education, but she should instead focus on anthropocentric explorations (if that defines her writing endeavours), depicting her creative impressions through the text. Insofar as talent and craftsmanship are concerned, I believe that creative writing is above all an art of comprehension and creative expression. Notions of sensory experience, imagination and practical research have been briefly put under the microscope, albeit creative processes and their governing dynamics constitute such a vast and exciting field for the novelist, that this can’t be my last creative roaming in its periphery. As it happens, this chapter completes the stage of Conceptualisation, and here we are, on the last floor, before we can enjoy the great view of the mezzanine. My next and final chapter is about conveying all such understanding through practice, through the second stage of Exposition.

6 Character and the Narrative

We’ve finally reached the phase of Exposition, which essentially refers to the process of ‘characterisation,’ through the fictional character’s properties as action instigator, receiver and reciprocator. The mechanics underlying the interactions between character and the rest of the narrative could not possibly be exhausted in a single chapter. The fictional character may well be viewed as a complex system of interrelated components in constant synergy and interaction (Egri, 1960; Varotsis, 2013), and as such would require in-depth analysis, which restrictions of economy don’t allow me here. I will therefore focus on those elements related to the agent’s navigation through the plot, through which characterisation manifests and the concept of the character arc (to be discussed shortly) becomes a potential. Examining the character as a begetter, recipient and reciprocator, I will be looking at (a) the emergence of her previously discussed identity through possible expositors, (b) character relations and (c) the basic principles of interaction between character and what could be called as ‘external stimuli.’ I begin with a few definitions of the terms ‘story,’ ‘plot’ and ‘event’ that I will be using: According to Forster’s (1974) distinction, [A story is] a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. ‘The king died and then the queen died’ is a story. ‘The king died, and then the queen died of grief’ is a plot. The time-sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it. (Forster, 1974, p. 87) Chatman (1978, p. 28) defines story as “[T]he continuum of events presupposing the total set of all conceivable details, that is, those that can be projected by the normal laws of the physical universe.” His account (ibid, p. 44) for ‘event’ entails that Events are either actions (acts) or happenings. Both are changes of state. An action is a change of state brought about by an agent or one that affects a patient. If the action is plot-significant, the agent or patient is called a character.

Character and the Narrative  127 And for Lothe (2000, p. 72) the event is a “[A]n integral part of the action: it involves a change or a transition from one situation to another … and this transition is usually caused or experienced by one or more characters.” I define ‘event’ as, The manifestation of an occurrence created either by the character’s actions, or the environmental forces of the author’s constructed ­spatio-temporal environment. And ‘plot’ as, The sequential narrative thread weaved by the character’s illusive free will and the author’s direct mechanics, guided by causality and, most often, temporal succession. The fundamental principle governing this book is that character and event co-exist in collaboration within the systemic universe of the narrative (Varotsis, 2013). An emphatic shift towards this or the other end results in some sort of compromise, or what Forster (1974, p. 92) described as the predominant triumph of plot, where characters seem to have no control over their own fate and any sense of realism is weakened. I have demonstrated that the novel can be viewed as an interchange between textual fate and possibility; I will now explore what that symmetry entails and how it can be achieved.

6.1  Character and Characterisation: Construction versus Exposition We frequently come across the terms ‘character’ and ‘characterisation’ or an interchange between the two. In general terms, the first is used to describe the fictional agent; the second refers to the conveyance of its constituent parts. Garvey (1978, p. 63) differentiates between ‘identification of character’ and ‘characterization,’ proposing that the former is limited to the assignment of names or general descriptive sentences, while the latter pertains to the attribution of traits and qualities which add descriptive depth. Similarly, Harvey (1965, p. 31) distinguished between “the raw material of character” and “techniques of characterization.” He additionally cautioned that [L]anguage may betray us if it suggests a process of manufacture; a more appropriate metaphor is that of conception, gestation, birth and growth – more appropriate because more mysterious. As critics we can never do more than guess or hint at what happens with the conjunction of vision and technique. (Harvey, 1965, p. 31)

128  Character and the Narrative Similarly, Phelan (1989) differentiates between character ‘dimensions’ and ‘functions’: A dimension is an attribute a character may be said to possess when a character is considered in isolation from the work in which he or she appears. A function is a particular application of that attribute made by the text through its developing structure. In other words, dimensions are converted into functions by the progression of the work. Thus, every function depends upon a dimension, but not every dimension will necessarily correspond to a function. (Phelan, 1989, p. 9) The constructed identity of a fictional character will unfold in various points in the narrative through the exposition of its individual parts, reforming and evolving until the conclusion of the story. As Schwarz (1989) indicates, Characterization depends on the author’s conscious and uncharacteristic decisions; it is a structure of effects perceived by the reader in her/his process of reading…. The relation between character — human voices and actions — the formal and linguistic embodiment of character — is dynamic, ever changing, inextricable, and messy. (Schwarz, 1989, p. 98) The better the novelist’s knowledge about her characters, the clearer and more concise they will emerge in the narrative. Not everything should make it to the text, though. Detail which is both exhaustive and irrelevant can render a story irrespective of its genre incoherent and difficult for the reader to follow. This is the process Henry James (2001, p. 861) referred to when he spoke of ‘solidity of specification’: The air of reality (solidity of specification) seems to me to be the supreme virtue of a novel … All life solicits [the author], and to “render” the simplest surface, to produce the most momentary illusion, is a very complicated business. In fact, one of the most important tasks an author faces is to select which details to use and which to withhold. The information revealed will help the reader reconstruct the text in terms of coherence, believability and narrative logic; the details to be left out are exactly the ones the reader is called to complete by following the author’s cues. It is those elements that form the imaginary dimensions of the fictional world, and render its inhabitants integrated figures that can be perceived by the reader, forming, as Garvey explains (1978, p. 65) “an integral and independent part of the narrative base component.”

Character and the Narrative  129 The selection of the conveyed information, both quality and quantity-­ wise, is bilateral. The first part pertains to authorial creativity and judgment. It is up to her style, strategy and aims to decide what to reveal and what to leave to her reader’s imagination. To quote Chatman (1972, p. 77), “The author must somehow be granted the right to the decision about what and how much to include: it is not only the kinds of statements his ‘system’ permits him, but which of these he actually elects to make.” The other side has to do with the narrative and its dynamics. Not all events and plot elements carry the same significance, and not all members of the fictional cast have been assigned the same roles. It is the latter that I will analyse next.

6.2  A Classification of Characters The number of fictional persons that appear in a novel varies from work to work, and we could look into the duration of their presence, their impact on the plot as well as the extent they have been revealed to us in order to classify them according to ‘character typology’ (Galef, 1993; Seger, 1990). Those parameters are not necessarily definitive. As David Galef (1993, p. 6) points out, “Even when a minor character is truly minor because of his insignificant role, he may not come across as flat. Rather, he may appear to have unplumbed depths, mainly because the light of exposition never fully illuminates him.” Here, I will propose a distinction of characters according to their function in the spatio-temporal framework of the work, as well as the duration of their presence and its significance for the plot and the other characters: a

The primary characters: the protagonist, the antagonist, and the anti-hero. b The principal characters, c The minor characters, and d The extras. The protagonist is what Egri (1960, p. 106) describes as the ‘pivotal character,’ who drives the plot forward and is the main instigator and recipient of conflict. Similarly, Mills (2006, p. 114) explains that “[O]ne character’s point of view will dominate, and we call this character the protagonist. We see through their eyes, get to know their speech, attitude, physique; in other words it is their rhythm which claims our attention the most.” In a novel, the lives of characters become directly or indirectly entangled pushing the plot forward. The protagonist is the character whose particular life is placed under an illuminating spotlight in a particular

130  Character and the Narrative moment – a moment which lasts throughout the novel. Stein (1995, p.  49) pointedly considers novels to be ‘chapters in characters’ lives.’ The protagonist, thus, is the character whose thoughts, motives, actions, their reciprocations and the impact of the story’s events are narrated above all others. There need not be only one protagonist. Many novels are focussed on the lives of a number of characters. In Fingersmith (2002) we are told the same story from both Sue and Maud’s individual perspectives. In The Ice Storm (1994), every member of the Hood family – Benjamin, Elena, Wendy and Paul – are all assigned primary roles. In The Glorious Heresies (2016), Ryan, Georgie, Tony and Maureen all get the chance to have their stories and accounts told. And in ‘The Course of Love’ (2017), Rabih and Kirsten’s lives are the very reason and point of the novel. Against the protagonist, usually, stands the antagonist, sometimes also called the ‘villain.’ I tend to avoid the latter term when referring to contemporary fiction, as its function is to stand at the opposite pole of a moral axis which denudes conflict of its finer threads. Having stepped away from ancient archetypes and Todorov’s classifications (1977), modern fiction focusses on the individual. As Kundera (1988, p. 18) underlines, fiction is all about complexity and its aim to dispel the illusion of simplicity. Smith (1995), respectively, asserts that The graduated moral structure is characterized by a spectrum of moral gradations rather than a binary opposition of values. Characters are not sorted into two camps, the good and the evil, but rather occupy a range of positions between the two poles…. The more complex a person’s interiority, the less she can function as a personalized emblem of a clear moral state. (Smith, 1995, pp. 207–214) In fact, the novel can be precisely the medium to explore character movement along this spectrum. The term ‘antagonist’ stands for those conflicting forces that dictate evolution and development. Much like the protagonist, she is another textual person in the narrative world with her own constructed ideas, desires and goals. When the two personalities cross, conflict arises triggering the plot’s mechanisms. In Fingersmith (2002), for example, the antagonist is Richard Rivers, also known as ‘Gentleman,’ who involves both Sue and Maud in his schemes for personal gain. Initially, the two girls seem to be placed in an antagonistic relationship, to ultimately be united by feelings of affection for each other, as well as their hatred for Rivers himself. In The Glorious Heresies (2016), character roles are complicated by the author’s exquisite use of third person limited narration: Jimmy Phelan, for instance, is an exemplary portrait of an antagonist, whose account of events is proffered alongside the protagonists.’ Equally, Tony Cusack’s role interchanges between that of the main character trying to

Character and the Narrative  131 make sense of his life and his self-definition as a father, and being Ryan’s predominant problem – an abusive parent. Sometimes, the antagonist is represented by a different part of the protagonist’s self, who is called to resolve her internal conflict in a self-­ revelatory catharsis (Varotsis, 2013). In The Ice Storm (1998), the characters have to fight their own demons and the consequences of their choices that have shaped their family lives. Benjamin Hood is struggling to deal with his alcoholism and infidelity, trying to redefine himself through choice and regret. His wife, Elena, is perpetually bound by familial strings – her parents when she was younger and now her husband and sons – while trying to escape her reality and, along with it, herself. In The Glorious Heresies (2016) Tony and Ryan Cusack perpetually stand against each other yet often they are the biggest obstacle to themselves. And in The Course of Love (2017), de Botton beautifully demonstrates how conflicts arise through our own inability to look inward and overcome what circumstances have moulded us into. Enter the anti-hero, a pivotal figure lingering between protagonist and antagonist, whose moral values and actions the reader is likely to disapprove of (Mullan, 2006, p. 91). Notwithstanding this, her end-goal is not reader allegiance. The deeper into the narration we move, the more complex and appealing she appears to be, representing the perplexity of the eternal existential self. Moment by moment, the reader may find herself immersed in the anti-hero’s personal journey, surrendering her second self (Poulet, 2001) as she would do with any other character. Here, another convention is lifted: unlike the caution-triggering uncertainty of real encounters, fiction offers the opportunity of gradual experimentation and comprehension, without the sense of self-exposure to danger. Without the prevalence of self-defence mechanisms, curiosity and imagination are freely at work (Smith, 1995, p. 234). This prerogative of distanced examination is the key to the alignment with the anti-hero. Due to her multidimensional reflections, she may appear intriguing, attracting the reader’s interest in the most delicate constituents of the human condition. The dynamics behind the anti-­hero’s existence, her speculated history, the clues given and those left for the reader to ponder upon, render her one of the most complex elements in literature. Coetzee (1999) presents a prime portrait of an anti-hero in the character of David Lurie. Indeed, the professor’s self-perception becomes evident from the first sentence (p. 1): “For a man of his age, fifty-two, divorced, he has, to his mind, solved the problem of sex rather well.” The romanticised self-image of the passionate scholar whose temperament cannot be tamed explains the lack of inhibition in his deeds. When Soraya, the prostitute, disappears, Lurie pays a detective to track her down and calls her at home (p. 13). His surprise at her direct rejection is indicative of his oblivion at the impropriety of his actions. Then Lurie meets Melanie Isaacs and, becoming so engrossed in her while

132  Character and the Narrative so absorbed in himself, he fails to appreciate the weight of his actions. Upon imposing himself on her, he thinks (1999): Not rape, not quite that, but undesired nevertheless, undesired to the core. As though she had decided to go slack, die within herself for the duration, like a rabbit when the jaws of the fox close on its neck. So that everything done to her might be done, as it were, far away. (Coetzee, 1999, p. 32) And later on (p. 37): “If he does not sense in her a fully sexual appetite, that is only because she is still young.” Even when he is called to face the committee, he still does not see the cynicism of his intrusion (p. 67): “I was not myself. I was no longer a fifty-year old divorcee [sic] at a loose end. I became a servant of Eros.” When the reporters ask him whether he has regretted his actions, he responds (p. 72), “I was enriched by the experience.” And yet Lurie does not try to justify the situation against better judgment; his words reflect his perceptions. As the novel unfolds, he is forced to re-evaluate them, albeit always carrying his idiosyncratic mosaic with him. Lurie’s anger at the assumption that he cannot speak for his daughter’s experience when she’s raped is indicative: You weren’t there. You don’t know what happened. He is baffled. Where, according to Bev Shaw, according to Lucy, was he not? In the room where the intruders were committing their outrages? Do they think he does not know what rape is? Do they think he has not suffered with his daughter? What more could he have witnessed than he is capable of imagining? Or do they think that, where rape is concerned, no man can be where the woman is? Whatever the answer, he is outraged, outraged at being treated like an outsider. (Coetzee, 1999, p. 187) Indeed, Lurie is outraged at being denied the prerogative to empathise, to support and to be involved in the aftermath of what has happened. At the same time, he refuses to acknowledge his own situation – his ignorance of how rape is not confined by the interpretational boundaries of culture – and to walk in Mr Isaacs’s shoes. Even when he visits the Isaacs’s home to apologise and meets Desirée Isaacs, he cannot help his own thoughts: He does not say, I know your sister, know her well. But he thinks: fruit of the same tree, down probably to the most intimate detail. Yet with differences: different pulsing of the blood, different urgencies of passion. The two of them in the same bed: an experience fit for a king. (Coetzee, 1999, p. 219)

Character and the Narrative  133 A non-exhaustive list of notable literary anti-heroes includes: Humbert in Lolita (Nabokov, 2004), Alexander DeLarge in A Clockwork Orange (Burgess, 2013), Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye (Salinger, 1994), Tom Ripley in The Talented Mr Ripley (Highsmith, 2018) and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (Bronte, 1965). A number of other characters may be frequently or barely present in the narrative, serving different purposes. For many writers, a basic categorisation between major and minor characters is sufficient. The acceptance of their significance however is unanimous. As Galef (1993, p. 1) notes, “[T]hey carry out much of the mechanics of the fiction, so that understanding how an author deploys [them] helps one understand how the work is put together.” Galef (1993, p. 11) categorises by means of plot, theme, space and action, and his own typology of the minors entails ‘cameos,’ ‘bit parts,’ and ‘minor roles’ (ibid, p. 12). Proposing my own classification of secondary figures, I respectively nominate them as principal and minor characters, and extras. Principal are the characters encircling the primary figures. Their presence is essential, both as expositors of the protagonist’s and the antagonist’s personalities, but also as significant plot schemata – the type of character Harvey (1965, p. 63) called ‘the ficelle.’ Their actions generate reactions, either as direct acts or indirectly by triggering external stimuli. They also provide strong contrasts with the primaries, highlighting them further (Seger, 1990). In The Ice Storm (1994), the Hoods are constantly defined by the Williamses. Jim, Janey, Mike and Sandy are all dominant figures in the lives of Ben, Elena and Wendy. Similarly, in Fingersmith (2002), Mrs Sucksby and Christopher Lilly have shaped Sue and Maud’s pasts, and as such, account for their future actions. In The Glorious Heresies (2016), Tara Duane is the one figure whose personality and constant interferences send most of the novel’s characters into a downward spiral from which they are subsequently called to emerge. And in Disgrace (1999), Lucy Lurie becomes the epicentre around which her father’s life becomes entangled, reformed and even re-evaluated. The principal characters’ presence need not be continuous or even frequent. They can still appear briefly and act as a determinant in the shape of the plot. Referring to the filmic character, Smith (1995, p. 133) views that the extent of individuation of each character will not depend so much on the screen time they occupy, but rather on the consequences of their actions, and how their consequences will shape the story’s major subplots. In Disgrace (1999), for example, Melanie Isaacs only appears in the beginning and then towards the end. Yet she represents the inception of life-changing events for Lurie. Equally in Fingersmith (2002), Christopher Lilly is the very cause Maud agrees to Rivers’s scheme. Characters who serve particular scenes are minor. Their presence may be temporary or dispersedly continuous, but its function remains static,

134  Character and the Narrative surrounding the primary and principal cast. Their actions can still serve as determinants in the plot, also highlighting aspects of the primaries’ characterisation. They stand an equal distance from the major characters and from the reader herself (Galef, 1993). An example of a minor character affecting the plot is Charles, from Fingersmith (2002). In his desperate search for Rivers, the boy ends up in the madhouse where he will help Sue escape. Together they will make their way to London, where Sue will uncover Gentleman’s machinations and reclaim her place in the Borough. When Rivers is murdered, Charles is the one to call the police, the plot taking its final course into resolution leading to Mrs Sucksby’s execution and Sue’s return to Briar. In The Glorious Heresies (2016), Robbie O’Donovan breaks into an ex-brothel which Jimmy Phelan’s mother, Maureen, now uses as a flat to retrieve Georgie’s scapular, and Maureen hits him on the head with a ‘Holy Stone,’ killing him. His murder instigates a series of events and bifurcation of paths around which the entire narrative will revolve. And in Disgrace (2000), Lurie and his daughter are taking the dogs for a walk when three passing men make them nervous; the same three that will later rape Lucy and won’t be seen in the novel again. Minors don’t have to be indistinguishable stereotypes. The author’s ability to recreate the human image is still challenged, for now she is called to convince without the prerogative to expand. After all, minor characters are still fictional presences in a fictional world. They may still evoke inferences from readers, so if the author chooses to momentarily emphasise their presence, she can add an extra dimension through habits in action, dialogue, etc. (Galef, 1993); or, in other words, render them unique in their lifelike individual existence. Another way to illuminate a minor character is through the perspective of a primary or principal one (Stein, 1995, p. 71), characterising both at the same time. In The Ice Storm (1998), Moody uses George Clair to define the Hoods: At the weekly research meetings, Clair was constantly leaping in to help out with the media and entertainment securities. And it wasn’t that he wanted to cover entertainment stocks: he just wanted the space Benjamin Hood took up, Hood’s air and water and space and pension and office. (Moody, 1998, p. 119) On the other hand, Elena (Moody, 1998, p. 155) simply “[H]ad a conversation with George Clair, a man her husband couldn’t stand. Seemed nice enough.” At the end of the gathering, the reader is informed that, unlike the Hoods, Clair does not participate in the key-party and leaves with his own wife instead (p. 165), something that highlights Ben’s mood and actions even further.

Character and the Narrative  135 In The Course of Love (2017, p. 60), de Botton uses Murray who is “gruff, bearded, in the oil industry and a one-time admirer of Kirsten’s” to set off an argument between Rabih and Kirsten. Murray asks Rabih what he does for a living, and Kirsten informs him that Rabih is an architect: “I see – sitting out the recession in these dark parts of the kingdom, are we, before bursting back into the limelight to put up the next Great Pyramid of Giza?” Murray chortles a bit too loudly at his own unfunny jibe, but it’s not this that bothers Rabih; rather, it’s the way Kirsten joins in, cradling in her hand what remains of her pint, inclining her head towards her old college buddy and laughing heartily along with him, as though something quite amusing really has been said. (de Botton, 2017, p. 60) Kirsten’s reaction to Murray’s comments will drive Rabih to ‘sulk’ for the night, which is the subject of the entire chapter in a book dedicated to marital life. Finally, extras are the anonymous figures populating the textual spaces of the novel. They function as what Galef (1993, p. 11) refers to as ‘animated scenery,’ highlighting or simply encircling the rest of the cast. For example, extras are the guests in The Ice Storm’s key-party, and Moody (1998, op 155) chooses to present the reader with a long list of last names, offering a vivid portrayal of the closed society of New Canaan and Elena’s habitual reality. Recapitulating, I shall use this most descriptive quote by Seger (1996): Imagine a painting of a wedding. There is much detail around the two main figures of the bride and groom. And there are many figures, most of them somewhat indistinguishable from each other. But among them there are several who are sharply and broadly drawn: a young girl in red, for instance, in the foreground, playing with a kitten who has wandered into the scene; the minister, looking self-­ important, in full view as he stands on the top steps of the church; the mother of the bride, in a bright yellow lace dress, hovering near her daughter, weeping with joy. In this picture, the supporting characters are just as memorable as the major ones. Although there are some who are indistinguishable (the guests who are the extras), there are others who round out the story being told, and who expand upon the theme of love and marriage. (Seger, 1996, pp. 120–121) Likewise, characters in fiction stand out, draw momentary curiosity, capture the reader’s glances or simply exist as a vivid setting for the portrait of life.

136  Character and the Narrative

6.3  S elf-Creation of Character: The Concept of Character Arc If we view the narrative as an ensemble of continuous movement with interacting components, we can clearly understand that those components are also subject to constant activity and change. An event by definition cannot be perceived as ‘static’ and since both external stimuli and character trigger events in the story, it makes sense to view character as an evolving construction. The popular term ‘character arc’ encompasses precisely this very concept: the perpetual movement of the fictional character through the narrative. Glover (1988) writes that Consciously shaping our own characteristics is self-creation…. The identity we create is often shaped, not by some heroic struggle, but through our choice of partners and friends, by the job we choose, and by where we decide to live…. Self-creation is a matter of shaping our characteristics, even minor ones, in the light of our attitudes and values. (Glover, 1988, pp. 131–132) As already demonstrated, the character concept as a dynamic organisation entails shifts and reformations motivated by personal characteristics, as well as the influences of the textual environment. Changes in the narrative occur within a developmental continuum, essentially weaving it, until they frequently result in a cathartic transformation. The recreation of the fictional identity is motivated by conflict, which will inevitably lead to the internal and external changes required for the character to survive through it. Daiches (1960) defines ‘character arc’ as follows: As a result of the circumstance in which the character finds himself throughout the course of the story, his nature is modified and we are finally confronted with a different person from the one we met at the beginning…. The final character is different, in the sense that events have made actual elements in his nature which before were only potential. (Daiches, 1960, pp. 21–22) Similarly, Lothe (2000) writes that The novel’s plot (and thus the form of madness that initiates and complicates it) changes the character in the course of the narrative, partly because the surrounding world to a greater degree meets the main character on his own terms and responds to him with various forms of counterplay. (Lothe, 2000, pp. 84–85)

Character and the Narrative  137 My own definition of character arc is The gradual transformation of character, occurring through actions, reciprocations and thereof evaluations, which by the end of the story may result in new or shifted perspectives for the character in question. It’s worth clarifying at this stage that the re-evaluation of character attitude is not a panacea for all literature, and in many instances the character finds herself trapped in her own fictional self, rather than redeemed from it (Schwarz, 1989). This is the case in The Ice Storm (1994), where the resolution lies within the protagonists’ realisation that the family they try to escape has consisted of them alone and that only facing the truth and themselves can bring redemption. However, it is the predisposition towards that change that depicts the essence of human nature and so whether resolved or not, the character will inevitably undergo many stages through an attempt towards self-definition or self-assessment. A prime example of character evolution shaped by choices and events can be found in The Glorious Heresies (2016) when Ryan overdoses on a combination of alcohol, cocaine and paracetamol. As he lies asleep in the unit, Tony finally makes his confessions: Still with his forehead to the bed, he reached for his son’s hand. His skin was warm. Tony ran his thumb over his knuckles and in his sleep Ryan took a deep breath. You’re not going to die on me anyway.’ There was room and time to talk. Mouth pressed against hospital sheets in case anyone heard him, Tony confessed to his sleeping son. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean any of it. They said down in Solidarity House you lash out at the ones you love the most, you know? If you’d just talked to me more often…’ (McInerney, 2016, p. 342) In ‘The Course of Love,’ de Botton (2017) entitles one of his final chapters ‘Maturity.’ As Rabih is getting older and moves towards realisation, subtle changes and observations manifest in the simplest of occasions: He becomes aware, for the first time in his life, of the beauty of flowers. He remembers harbouring a near-hatred of them as an adolescent. It seemed absurd that anyone should take joy in something so small and so temporary when there were surely greater, more permanent things on which to pin ambitions. He himself wanted glory and intensity. To be detained by a flower was a symbol of dangerous resignation. Now he is beginning to get the point. The love

138  Character and the Narrative of flowers is a consequence of modesty and an accommodation with disappointment. Some things need to go permanently wrong before we can start to admire the stem of a rose or the petals of a bluebell. (de Botton, 2017, p. 207) We thus return to the absorption of artifice, the illusion that the character is a free-willed entity enduring, determining and accounting for what is happening to her. Indeed, any primary character should be allowed the prerogative to her discoveries (Harvey, 1965). As Mudrick (1968, p. 109) remarked, “Character, in fiction as in life, is fate, but it is also potentiality.” Character growth emerges not just by the effects of her choices, but also those external occurrences that lie outside her will power. Harvey (1965, p. 113) similarly indicated that One of the obviously interesting things about a protagonist is the process of change and growth (or decay) which he undergoes during the course of the novel, changes of which he—lacking our privilege of varied perspectives—is often unaware. In Disgrace (1999) Lurie’s preconceptions and life stances are moulded by the enormity of the events, yet he seems to falter between emotion and intellect. When he goes to watch Melanie act on stage, he finds himself contemplating: In a sudden and soundless eruption, as if he has fallen into a waking dream, a stream of images pours down, images of women he has known on two continents, some from so far away in time that he barely recognizes them…. What has happened to them, all those women, all those lives? Are there moments when they too, or some of them, are plunged without warning into the ocean of memory? (Coetzee, 1999, p. 258) Yet the next minute: Enriched: that was the word the newspapers picked on to jeer at. A stupid word to let slip under the circumstances, yet now, at this moment, he would stand by it. By Melanie, by the girl in Touws River; by Rosalind, Bev Shaw, Soraya: by each of them he was enriched, and by the others too, even the least of them, even the failures. Like a flower blooming in his breast, his heart floods with thankfulness. (Coetzee, 1999, p. 258) The development in Lurie’s character is also visible in his stance towards animals. When he first arrives at Lucy’s land, his views about animal welfare are condescending (p. 95). Soon enough (p. 101), Lurie agrees

Character and the Narrative  139 to help Bev Shaw in her shelter, only “as long as I don’t have to become a better person. I am not prepared to be reformed. I want to go on being myself.” Yet as he reaches catharsis: He had thought he would get used to it. But that is not what happens. The more killings he assists in, the more jittery he gets. One Sunday evening, driving home in Lucy’s kombi, he actually has to stop at the roadside to recover himself. Tears flow down his face that he cannot stop; his hands shake. He does not understand what is happening to him. (Coetzee, 1999, p. 190) And: Why has he taken on this job? To lighten the burden on Bev Shaw? For that it would be enough to drop off the bags at the damp and drive away. For the sake of the dogs? But the dogs are dead; and what do dogs know of honour and dishonour anyway? For himself, then. For his idea of the world, a world in which men do not use shovels to beat corpses into a more convenient shape for processing. (Coetzee, 1999, pp. 194–195) Lurie’s metamorphosis is reflected in the transformation of his Byron project, the opera he wishes to write and towards which he repositions himself through the changes in his and Lucy’s lives. While he initially focusses on Byron himself and his relationship with young Teresa Guiccioli, he ends up contemplating about an aged Teresa instead, and Byron’s own abandoned daughter (Graham, 2003). He will finally surrender to the realisation of his vulnerability (p. 267): “Standing against the wall outside the kitchen, hiding his face in his hands, he heaves and heaves and finally cries.” This conjunction of possibility and authorial decision is what renders the character arc a smooth congruent process of micro-transitions, rather than one abrupt change of morals to serve the purposes of formulaic plots. After all, the character’s identity remains unaltered and she doesn’t experience her own transformations through the perspective of another. Viewpoints and life stances change in relation to her existing individuality. As Daiches (1960, p. 21) pointed out, development is different from crude change. Glover’s (1988) following comment is indicative: Not all self-creation involves strenuous efforts of will. It can be a matter of endorsing and encouraging tendencies that are already natural to us…. [It] is not like the instantaneous transformations

140  Character and the Narrative of magic, but more like sculpting a piece of wood, respecting the constraints of natural shape and grain. (Glover, 1988, pp. 135–136) Equally, Kupperman (1991) emphasises that Occasionally, we encounter someone whose character has been drastically transformed, and we say that so-and-so “hardly is the same person.” …. [D]rastic changes are exceptions that prove the rule: The ways we hold people responsible for their actions and the ways in which we expect their loves to maintain some continuity are keyed to the assumption that people’s characters normally are highly stable. (Kupperman, 1991, p. 16) Major changes may indeed occur by justified causes in a narrative. A prime example in Disgrace (1999, p. 142) is Lucy’s instant transformation, all but unexpected: Lucy keeps to herself, expresses no feelings, shows no interest in anything around her. It is he, ignorant as he is about farming, who must let the ducks out of their pen, master the sluice system and lead water to save the garden from parching. Lucy spends hour after hour lying on her bed, staring into space or looking at old magazines, of which she seems to have an unlimited store. She flicks through them impatiently, as though searching for something that is not there. (Coetzee, 1999, pp. 151–152) And in the note that she slips under his door, she admits (p. 215), “I am not the person you know. I am a dead person and I do not know yet what will bring me back to life.” In the face of such a life-changing incident, Lucy’s abrupt metamorphosis is inevitable. However, it is also temporary. Reaching closure, Lurie watches her as she works in the garden (p. 292), “She looks, suddenly, the picture of health.” The coherence of pace and restructuring is achieved by the narrative course, and the need for consistency emerges once again. It is only if the character is envisaged as a conceptual unity moving through her textual surroundings that any transformations may take place. To quote Kupperman again (1991): Even if character changes, in the process growing or deteriorating, the continuity of character can provide a unifying thread among different episodes. Not only will there be connections provided by continuity in the sort of person who is doing or responding to various

Character and the Narrative  141 things, but other unifying themes may well emerge as a result of the ways in which characters shape events. (Kupperman, 1991, pp. 135–136) The wonderful concluding chapters in The Course of Love (2017) portray those inner changes a person would go through after a healthy long-term marriage, having undergone moments of utter happiness and absolute despair. No surprise that de Botton names his chapter ‘Ready of Marriage’: Rabih recognizes that it’s a mere sleight of language that allows him to maintain that he has been married only once. What has conveniently looked like a single relationship in fact sits across so many evolutions, disconnections, renegotiations, intervals of distance and emotional homecomings that he has in truth gone through at least a dozen divorces and remarriages – just to the same person. (de Botton, 2017, p. 210) In the concluding section called ‘The Future,’ Kirsten will finally open up and speak to Rabih about her father: She explains that whenever she’s in a new place, she wonders whether he might happen to be living somewhere nearby. She wants to try to get in touch with him. Her eyes shine with withheld tears, and she says she’s tired of being angry with him her whole life long. Maybe she would have done the same thing as he did, in his shoes. (de Botton, 2017, pp. 217–218) A character may be called to defend or re-examine past beliefs, endorse new ones and even create new versions of her identity, which is an inseparable part of her self-creation (Glover, 1988; Margolin, 2002). At the end of Fingersmith (2002), Maud has turned from a fragile upper-class lady into a girl of the Borough, and then into a writer of erotic content. Sue, on the other hand, is considered ‘brave’ but not particularly clever at the beginning of the story (p. 12): “‘That’s Susan Trinder,’ someone might whisper then. ‘Her mother was hanged as a murderess. Ain’t she brave?’” And: I think the people who came to Lant Street thought me slow.—Slow I mean, as opposed to fast. Perhaps I was, by Borough standards. But it seemed to me that I was sharp enough. You could have not grown up in such a house, that had such businesses in it, without having a pretty good idea of what was that—of what could go into what; and what could come out. (Waters, 2002, p. 14)

142  Character and the Narrative Throughout the course of the novel, Sue cannot suspect the true motives behind Mrs Sucksby’s protection. She has grown up to believe that Sucksby is better than a mother, and that she raised and looked after her out of loyalty and genuine love. Once Sucksby’s true motives are revealed, and she is incarcerated following Rivers’s murder: They talked about my mother, and the bad blood that flowed in me. They didn’t say I was brave, now; they said I was bold. They said they wouldn’t have been surprised if it was me that put the knife in, after all … When I walked out in the Borough, people cursed me. Once, a girl threw a stone at me. At any other time it would have broken my heart. Now, I did not care. (Waters, 2002, p. 511) Those types of interactions between character and text and their subsequent reformations describe the dynamic nature of the novel as an active system of interrelated components (Varotsis, 2013), within which all parts assume equal significance and as such work in synergy. Hence, we can view character arc as the end result, the very epitome of such interactions even if it’s subtle.

6.4  Character Expositors In the first chapter of this book, I discussed notions of selfhood, personhood and identity, applying them to the fictional character concept. It is now time to examine how they can be conveyed on paper through what I call ‘character expositors’; or else, via those indicators through which the character’s idiosyncrasy can emerge in the text, rendering her a coherent and believable construct. Once again, for reasons of economy I am unable to provide an exhaustive list. I hope, however, to provide a sufficient and encompassing insight into the way character exposition works, leaving creative decisions to the author. The last of the conditions specified in the person schema in Chapter 1 was the individual’s ability to communicate. It is through communication that a (fictional) person reveals many and significant aspects of her identity. Such conveyance can be accomplished by both verbal expression and physical movement (or, in our case, its textual representation). A character’s unique speech can be exposited both by indirect discourse, that is, internal thoughts, or direct monologue or dialogue and is one of the most powerful tools of characterisation in an author’s disposal (Boulter, 2007; Rimmon-Kenan, 1983). Not only does it serve to define character relations, but most importantly, it is indicative of an identity’s dimensions, revealing stances, ideologies, socio-cultural backgrounds, goals and desires, as well as attitudes towards others. In Fingersmith (2002, p. 36), Sue refers to ‘chemise’ as ‘shimmy,’ and Rivers corrects her: “‘Her chemise, you must call it,’ he says.” Sue is now

Character and the Narrative  143 called to adopt a very different vocabulary and a new set of manners if she wants to pass as a lady’s maid; her scheme depends entirely on how convincing she is in her new role. In Disgrace (1999), David and Lucy Lurie argue over the position of animals: “I’m sorry, my child, I just find it hard to whip up an interest in the subject. It’s admirable, what you do, what she does, but to me animal-welfare people are a bit like Christians of a certain kind. Everyone is so cheerful and well-intentioned that after a while you itch to go off and do some raping [emphasis mine] and pillaging. Or to kick a cat”. … “You think, I ought to involve myself in more important things”, says Lucy…. “You think, because I am your daughter, I ought to be doing something better with my life. You don’t approve of friends like Bev and Bill Shaw because they are not going to lead me to a higher life … But it is true. They are not going to lead me to a higher life, and the reason is, there is no higher life. This is the only life there is. Which we share with animals”. … “[B]y all means let us be kind to them. But let us not lose perspective. We are of a different order of creation from the animals.” (Coetzee, 1999, pp. 95–96) Some writers choose to reproduce a written version of dialect, accent and social position by cramming vowels or consonants together, or omitting syllables. This is what Mullan (2006, p. 128) refers to as “Idiolects-­forms of speech distinctive of an individual.” In reality, (ab-) use of this technique renders the text indecipherable and the dialogue hard to follow. Much like fiction in its entirety, verbal communication in novels should not appear as a transcript of real-life speech but rather a recreated version of it (Boulter, 2007; Stein, 1995). Mullan (2006) accordingly explains that Even novelists who like to render the brute patterns of colloquial language will tactfully avoid the repetitions and redundancies, the endless qualifications and unfinished sentences, that characterize ‘real speech’. Fiction smoothes speech. It also often translates it. (Mullan, 2006, p. 129) If a writer wishes to convey ethnic, racial and/or socio-cultural attributes through dialogue, she may use ‘speech habits’ (Mullan, 2006, p.  131) through, for example, word omissions, syntactical errors, shifted word order in sentences, substitution of pronouns, slang, professional jargon and so on (Gumperz, 1982; Mullan, 2006; Stein, 1995). Here are two

144  Character and the Narrative examples from Disgrace (1999). The first is from Lucy’s encounter with the rapists, at her farm: To the men she says: ‘What do you want?’ The young one speaks. ‘We must telephone.’ ‘Why must you telephone?’ ‘His sister’—he gestures vaguely behind him—“is having an accident.” ‘An accident?’ ‘Yes, very bad.’ ‘What kind of accident?’ ‘A baby.’ ‘His sister is having a baby.’ ‘Yes.’ (Coetzee, 1999, pp. 121–122) It is not simply colloquialism exposited here. The men’s inability to provide consistent answers to Lucy’s question alerts the reader that something worrisome is to take place. The second example is from the scene where Lurie confronts Petrus over Pollux for a second time: ‘You say it is bad, what happened,’ Petrus continues. ‘I also say it is bad. It is bad. But it is finish.’ He takes the pipe from his mouth, stabs the air vehemently with the stem. ‘It is finish.’ ‘It is not finished. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean. It is not finished. On the contrary, it is just beginning. It will go on long after I am dead and you are dead.’ Petrus stares reflectively, not pretending he does not understand. ‘He will marry her,’ he says at last. ‘He will marry Lucy, only he is too young, too young to be marry. He is a child still.’ (Coetzee, 1999, pp. 270–271) Each character is unique, and so should her speech be. Equally, if all characters speak in perfectly constructed, highly stylised sentences, the dialogue will be completely deprived of realism. Characters can speak in fragmented sentences, in long sentences separated by commas, in gaps and pauses, and by using flamboyant words or poor vocabulary – if it derives from their personality. Different speech patterns signpost distinct identities, and dialogue, as an expositor, aims to achieve exactly that: to bring possible people alive on the page and offer a first-hand experience to the reader. Stein (1995), introduces the concept of ‘speech markers’ which are, [S]ignals that are quickly identifiable by the reader. Vocabulary is an important marker. Throwaway words and phrases are markers.

Character and the Narrative  145 Tight or loose wording is a marker. Run-on sentences are markers. Sarcasm is a marker. Cynicism is a marker. Poor grammar is a marker. Omitted words are markers. Inappropriate modifiers are markers. (Stein, 1995, pp. 116–117) Here is an example from The Glorious Heresies. Ryan Cusack’s internal, first person monologue: And I smile and she goes, ‘It’s not funny, Ryan!’ and looks like she might cry, and the thing is I know exactly what to do and I want to do it, believe me, I’m gagging to, only sometimes you have the right words in your mouth in the right order but it’s such a big thing and a big fright that you’re not sure if you can open up wide enough to get it out. … I get all mortified and look at the tarmac between my feet and she says, ‘Oh my God. Fine so,’ and turns away and I know she doesn’t realise what a weird thing this is for me, because this isn’t shit I’ve heard or said since I was a small fella, and I wince and she gets further away from me and I call, ‘Hey D`Arcy,’ and she turns around, blazing, and I shrug and say, ‘I loves yeh,’ and the whole yard reels with her and shouts Oooooh” and I go bright. Fucking, Red. (McInerney, 2016, p. 27) In Disgrace (1999, pp. 60–61), when Manas Mathabane asks Lurie, “[I]s there any member of the committee whose participation you feel might be prejudicial to you?” the latter replies, “I have no challenge in a legal sense … I have reservations of a philosophical kind, but I suppose they are out of bounds.” Lurie’s unique voice of scholarly arrogance and wit, depicted both in dialogue and internal monologue, is exemplary. It is not simply speech patterns that illuminate character but also the choice of words and attitudes towards others – what Stein (1995, p. 114) describes as “the effect of what is meant.” Gumperz et al., (1982, p. 30) also argue that We can never say anything without intoning it, and changing the intonation of an utterance entails changing some aspect of its meaning. Any one way of saying something is understood as a choice – it can only be explicated by contrast with other possibilities. Similarly, Seger (1990, p. 148) refers to ‘subtext,’ and Tannen (1992, p. 13) refers to the ‘meta-message,’ considering it relationship-defining, since meta-messages essentially communicate social meanings.

146  Character and the Narrative In The Ice Storm (1994), Elena wants to know why Ben had been wondering at the Williamses: ‘So what were you doing in the basement anyway?’ Only a slight hesitation. ‘Just dropping off a coffee cup. Jim left it, last time he was over. It was on the dash of the car. You were, you know, reading. I was just dropping off the cup.’ … ‘Oh, right,’ she said. ‘The mustache coffee cup. The one that was sitting on the dash.’ ‘Yeah, sure,’ he said. ‘That’s the one.’ ‘That one.’ Benjamin nodded vigorously. ‘That one.’ Her husband simply laughed. As if the flimsiness of his deceits wouldn’t adhere to him. (Moody, 1998, p. 65) And later on: ‘Stupid mustache cup[,]’ [Elena said]. ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Don’t be dim.’ ‘I don’t know what you’re talking [sic] about.’ ‘I’m not surprised,’ Elena said. … ‘Listen, honey, if you’re gonna pull the passive aggressive stuff on me again…’ ‘Your unfaithfulness, she said. That’s what I’m trying to talk about. Your unfaithfulness, your betrayal. Your dalliance. Okay? And you won’t do me the dignity of being up-front about it.’ (Moody, 1998, p. 70) Whether habitual or premeditated, verbal manners reveal elements of identity. In that sense, dialogue also becomes a relationship-defining tool as well as a self-revealing mechanism, since the words and stances of a character may sometimes say more about her than the one she addresses (Rimmon-Kenan, 1983, p. 64). In Disgrace (1999), referring to Petrus, old Ettinger says (p. 144), “Not one of them you can trust.” In The Ice Storm (1994), Jim Williams has spent the night with Elena in an act of unspoken retaliation against their spouses’ infidelity. Yet when they discover that Sandy and Wendy also spent the night together, albeit misreading what really happened, Jim berates and preaches: Imagine, Sandy, if Wendy were to get pregnant right now…. Do you expect us to carry the expenses you two incur through stupidity?

Character and the Narrative  147 Hell, no! And who’s going to teach this kid the morals it needs to have? Its morality is already a little sloppy based on the job you’re doing now. Get it? You two aren’t even done learning morals yourselves and already you want the responsibility of taking on a kid? And add to this the fact that you don’t know how you feel about each other, because there are other … extenuating relationships going on around here. You don’t even know what you think exactly. (Moody, 1998, p. 246) Body language is another form of communication. The way a person walks, her postures, facial expressions and habitual movements all serve to characterise her and can be used to signify the character’s social background, as well as to define her relationships with the rest of the cast. As Mullan (2006, p. 139) explains, “Gestures and affections carry characters beyond their languages…. Reaching between languages becomes a special intimacy, for it is a way in which a person loses his certainties and assumptions.” In Disgrace (1999), when Lurie visits Mr Isaacs in the latter’s office (p.  221), “Isaacs has a cheap Bic pen in his hand. He runs his fingers down the shaft, inverts it, runs his fingers down the shaft, over and over, in a motion that is mechanical rather than impatient.” Similarly, in The Ice Storm (1994, p. 113), the reader is informed that “Elena smiled faintly when she was distressed.” And in Fingersmith (2002, p. 42), Sue narrates, “Mr Ibbs [was] only drumming his fingers a little on the ­table-top, by which I knew that he was nervous.” Habits, obsessions and rituals are equally expository, individualising primary and secondary characters all the same. In Fingersmith (2002, p. 50) the reader learns that John and Dainty never rise before 1 pm; that Sue is not a ‘crying girl’ (p. 62); that Christopher Lilly (p. 75) has painted his library windows yellow to protect his precious collection from sunlight and (p. 76) that he keeps a brass hand with a pointed finger on the floor to mark the boundaries nobody is to surpass; and that Maud is bad at stitching (p. 81) and keeps a picture of her mother locked up in a box, which she kisses every night before she goes to bed. Sue perceives this as an act of nostalgia, a tribute (p. 85); in reality, Maud hates her mother and does it only to torment Mrs Stiles (p. 197). And in The Course of Love (2017) we learn that Kirsten likes to sleep with the window open to have some fresh air in the room, while Rabih doesn’t appreciate sleeping in the cold (pp. 50–51); that Kirsten prefers to be picked up at seven when she’s booked a table for eight in a restaurant three miles away, while Rabih wants to finish his work and actually leave home for eight and be there circa eight fifteen (p. 51); and that unlike Kirsten who starts narrating a story midway, Rabih feels he needs to give his audience some background and context first (pp. 51–52) prior to his own narration.

148  Character and the Narrative Other character expositors include personal tastes, personal objects or choice of apparel. In The Ice Storm (1994, p. 15), the reader is informed that during college Ben drove a Jaguar, which he later had to replace with a family Corvair (p. 15); that Wendy watches Watergate (p. 40), doesn’t mind winter (p. 41), and loves Chiller Theater and Nanny and the Professor (p. 151); and that Paul is “a compulsive reader of comics” (79). And the Hood’s key-ring becomes an object of significance at the Harolds’ party, when Janey recognises it, sets it aside in the salad bowl and goes for a different one instead, instigating a series of events (p. 169). Let’s also consider the following passage at the beginning of the story, when Ben walks into Mike’s room: Hood headed for Mike Williams’s room. He was sure the doorknob would be rigged with home electronic alarms. The apparatus for this alarm would be arranged on the floor just inside the room, rigged with pipe cleaners and roach clips and a nine-volt battery he had lifted from somebody’s automatic garage opener. Mike liked whoopee cushions and rubber dog excrement. He often wore a Nixon mask…. Mike’s doorknob released no shock, however…. Black-light posters and tapestries covered the walls, tapestries that, in light of the dim table lamp Hood switched on, were full of burn holes and unidentifiable stains. A water pipe the size of a barber pole stood in one corner. (Moody, 1998, pp. 21–22) Indeed, Mike is the curious, the inventing boy, whose love for experimentation will lead him to his death by electrocution. Another example is the Hood’s house, pointedly depicting Elena’s mood and their life rhythm: The hall was blue-gray and the master bedroom was blue-gray and the rug was a deeper shade of blue-gray and the curtains were a sort of blue-gray. The bedspread on the master bed was blue and red, checked. The light outside was blue-gray, and when Elena switched on a light by the bed it hardly did the trick. (Moody, 1998, p. 63) This description does not only serve to characterise Elena’s nature, but also her dissimilarity with Ben’s mistress, Janey Williams, who has a waterbed in the master bedroom (p. 28). In Fingersmith (2002, p. 77) Maud hates eggs, as they remind her of the day she was brought to Briar. She has also been made to constantly wear gloves so that her hands are smooth enough to handle her uncle’s books (p. 189). Sue steals one of them (p. 148) and it becomes a souvenir, an object she grows to hate but fights to keep (p. 406). And Nurse

Character and the Narrative  149 Bacon’s hand ointment becomes the object that will set Sue free, when she moulds the key copy in its grease (pp. 455–456). In Disgrace (1999) David Lurie is fascinated by Byron’s life, prefers not to listen to jazz (p. 19), and finds Melanie’s rodent slippers tasteless (p. 31). And in The Course of Love (2017, pp. 49–50), Kirsten and Rabih argue over a set of Ikea glasses, with Kirsten wanting to buy “the little tumblers which taper at the base and have two blobs of swirling blue and purple across the sides” when Rabih would actually go for a set of “larger, unadorned and straight-sided” ones. All discussed expositors should be used appropriately. An abundance of gesturing, meaningless dialogue and unnecessary details that are neither linked to the plot or serve as to individuate the character may render the writing somewhat incoherent and distract the reader from the very essence they are supposed to highlight. Dialogue that is over-stylised, dense with idiolects or a copy of a real person’s incoherent mumbling is likely to alienate rather than entice the reader into the plot. A list of endless descriptive elements of the setting or someone’s apparel to the very last detail can divert her attention to presume on non-existent subplots. Above all, the author should remember that elements of characterisation are exactly that – the means to accomplish coherent character exposition and as such ascertain the reader’s participation at the other end of the communication axis; not the ends themselves.

6.5  Character Relations The term ‘character relations’ can refer to actual liaisons between primary characters and the rest of the cast but also to those connections among the agents as textual elements interacting with one another, creating new dynamics for the plot. A narrative may be regarded as an intersection of dissimilar fictional paths, a web knitted by the consequences of choices. As Harvey (1965) explained, The human context … is primarily a web of relationships; the characters do not develop along single and linear roads of destiny but are, so to speak, human-crossroads. It is within this pattern, this meshing together of individualities, that they preserve their autonomy, yet through our perception of the pattern their significance extends beyond themselves into a general comment of the world. (Harvey, 1965, p. 69) The clash of conflicts, fears and desires emerging as a sequence of occurrences create crossroads for the characters (Stein, 1995). As Williams (1995, p. 4) has written, “All choices operate in a space of alternatives constrained by the contingent cause of various possibilities.” The entire narrative of The Ice Storm (1994) is built precisely on this principle. The

150  Character and the Narrative Ice Storm is primarily a novel about human relations and the effects of personal choice. Ben is unfaithful because (p. 12) “Elena had been shy and brilliant and beautiful and impossible to talk to.” For Wendy (p. 39), “her family was chilly and sad…. She had never seen her parents embrace.” Elena, on the other hand, is aware of her husband’s infidelity (p. 55) and sick of his drinking and ‘impotence’ (p. 54). In the end, she decides to retaliate by sleeping with Jim Williams (p. 176), only to regret it the next day. Janey and Jim Williams face their own marital problems (p. 177) and the Harold’s key-party is the epitome of the seventies’ American culture Moody aims to depict: In New Canaan, word had come of the key parties long before the first had been thrown. Local marriages awaited key parties the way a smart boy, already having pored over the dictionary definition of masturbation, awaits the day when he will understand it. The first one, thrown by some younger, unhappier residents over in the West School district … was viewed publicly with contempt but privately with much interest. (Moody, 1998, p. 110) Conflicts aren’t simply the result of different choices, they often derive from misinterpretations of stances (Kochman, 1981; Tannen, 1992). Indeed, miscommunication is an indisputable external conflict instigator. This is the foundation upon which bipolar dynamics such as the ­protagonist-antagonist are built upon to develop. In Fingersmith (2002), Sue, Maud and Rivers are bound in a triangle of deception. Sue believes she is plotting against Maud, while in reality it is Maud scheming against her. Yet Maud will soon discover that she herself has been a part of a darker, long-prepared plan by a group of thieves, led by a woman who turns out to be her real mother. It is her familial bond with the girl that leads Mrs Sucksby to betray Sue. Character relations will form, change and reform attitudes, resulting in new situations. The way others perceive us plays a significant role in our own self-interpretation and can often lead to the (re-)shaping of personality elements (Burr, 2002). An integral mode of characterisation, relationships define their participants, highlighting idiosyncratic aspects by similarity or contrast (Margolin, 1987; Rimmon-Kenan, 1983; Seger, 1990). And as Boulter (2007, p. 141) writes, the uniqueness of a character can only make sense when juxtaposed with the rest of the cast. In Disgrace (2002) Lurie views himself as a man of impulse and passion, while cultivating an increasing hatred for the three men that raped his daughter. He places himself not in comparison to the rapists, but in direct contrast. He considers his advances on Melanie Isaacs different from the attack against Lucy, both by motivation and outcome. Melanie and Lucy are also different. Protected by the institutional urbanism

Character and the Narrative  151 of the Cape Town University, Melanie reports Lurie; Lucy on the other hand, will not even think of pressing charges in the vastness of the ­Eastern Cape. Character relations are not determined only by the conclusions of comparison, but also through motivations that trigger actions. As Burr (2002) outlines, Human interaction … demands that we have some conception of the meaning that our actions hold for others, and that we know that they will know that we have such a conception. Meaningful social interaction is distinguished by this characteristic: we are able to imaginatively anticipate the effects of our actions on others and act accordingly…. Our role in a situation is therefore always a function of the roles of others. (Burr, 2002, pp. 66–67) The complexity of human relations, their impact and consequences render the novel not just a form of entertainment, but an inexhaustible source of human truths and possibilities. Fingersmith (2002), Disgrace (1999), The Ice Storm (1994), The Course of Love (2017) and The Glorious Heresies (2016) all demonstrate exemplary characterisation, with characters driven by convincing motivations and desires, defining their actions, leading to outcomes which, in their turn, instigate new actions and motivations. In Fingersmith (2002), Sue goes to Briar motivated by the promise of 3,000 pounds and to make Mrs Sucksby proud. Yet she will be betrayed by Maud who longs for her own freedom, thus ending up in the madhouse. Driven by hatred and love, her new purpose will be to escape, uncover Rivers’s deception and resume her place in the Borough. She will succeed only with the help of Charles, who, grieved by Rivers’s departure and the ill-treatment he’s been getting at Briar, will flee in search for ‘Miss Lilly,’ hoping to be led to Rivers himself. Sue and Maud’s life paths inter-cross creating new situations for themselves and others resulting in further consequences, and so on. In The Ice Storm (1994), amidst the havoc of the Hoods’ and Williamses’ family life degradation, Mike Williams dies. On the night of the ice storm, he exits his house unsupervised to seek adventure, leaving a bundle of clothes in his place on the bed. His absence will not be noticed until much later, after Jim and Elena have discovered that their younger children have spent the night together, and Janey has returned home from her own night with an almost teenager. In The Glorious Heresies (2016), characters seem to involuntarily stumble onto each other’s lives, creating a bigger mess as they go along. Robbie O’Donovan breaks into Jimmy Phelan’s ex-brothel to retrieve Georgie’s scapular, and is accidentally killed by Maureen. Attempting

152  Character and the Narrative to start anew, Georgie seeks a new dealer and Tara Duane introduces her to Ryan Cusack, whose father, Tony, helps Jimmy get rid of Robbie’s corpse. Georgie joins a Christian group who offer to rehabilitate her but, in the process, falls pregnant, has her baby taken by the father and his family, and returns to prostitution with the hope to make ends meet in order to be reunited with her baby. When she discovers that Robbie is dead, she returns to the flat to retrieve her scapular. Jimmy then finds her and threatens to kill her, but Maureen stops him. Characters will love and be loved, fear and be feared, noticed or bypassed, and so their fates will be sealed or define those of others. Outside the solipsistic cage of her own existence, the reader’s surrendered self enters into a multitude of virtual others, gaining insights and views she otherwise had no access to. And so the novel becomes nothing less than a great study of humanity.

6.6  External Stimuli By ‘external stimuli’ I refer to all events affecting or altogether altering the emotional and situational status of a fictional agent, lying outside the scope of her illusive free will. External stimuli can pertain to the textual environment, ranging from natural disasters to delayed trains; or the consequential impact of character relations discussed earlier. Lothe (2000, p. 3) defines ‘narrative’ as “[A] chain of events which is situated in time and space.” The time and space in a text constitute the narrative’s environment. Since a narrative entails only its textual dimension, conceptual adjustments of the terms ‘time’ and ‘space’ need to be made. And so for clarification purposes, I embed Rimmon-Kenan’s (1983, p. 44) account, according to which, “[T]ime in narrative fiction can be defined as the relations of chronology between story and text.” At the same time, the notion of ‘space’ equals the fictional setting within which the fictional character is placed. A character and her assigned environment exist in constant interaction and as such are closely interconnected (Varotsis, 2013). External stimuli will trigger responses and shifts in the character’s internal organisation, which, in their turn, will instigate further events. Whether the original initiator is the agent – “a vital determinant of events” as Currie (2010, p.  186) states – or an external stimulus, the cause-andeffect equilibrium of the narrative remains the same. Similarly, the interconnection between the external stimulus and the character is both bidirectional and consequential – either by direct or indirect impact, the constantly reformed dynamic between character and external stimulus creates the plot. Moody’s (1998) narrative reaches its resolution when the ice storm peaks. The characters’ moods and actions move alongside the deterioration

Character and the Narrative  153 of the weather, bracing themselves both against forthcoming encounters and their implications, and the ice storm itself. It is because of the weather that Mike dies, yet in reality his death is the outcome of the crystallisation of relationships. The following quote by Zola (1959) elaborates this principle further: Man is not alone but exists in society, in a social environment, and so far as we novelists are concerned, this environment is constantly modifying events…. [S]ocial environment will be affected by our manipulation of all those human phenomena we learn to control. And in this direction lies all that constitutes the experimental novel: … portrayal of the human being in the environment which he himself had made and alters daily, and in the midst of which he in his turn undergoes continual transformation. (1959, Zola, cited in Allott, p. 303) In Disgrace (1999), Lucy’s rape is the event that will lead Lurie to his catharsis, resetting his perspectives and even sense of place in life. And in Fingersmith (2002), Sue will discover Marianne Lilly’s will in Mrs Sucksby’s taffeta dress after the latter’s execution (pp. 528–529). It is this letter that finally leads to the novel’s resolution, with Sue deciding to seek out Maud and reconcile with her. External stimuli redefine the narrative causing shifts in its organisation, forcing the character to make decisions anew by (re-)adjusting elements of her personality, such as priorities, values and needs, assuming the form of external conflict and motivation. It is by such continuous shifts and reformations that the character arc is completed. As previously explained, a new book can be written on the expansion of this section alone. A wealth of material on the topic can be found in cognitive narratology and structuralist theory texts and infinite examples can be given from existing fiction. A delayed train, a thunderstorm, a car crash, an earthquake, the sale of a house, a nearby crime, a political decision and a plethora of other events can trigger character reactions, leading lives to interweave, creating the narrative thread. The manifestation of representational schemata in linear and non-linear narratives could constitute a good exercise for the apprentice writer, not so much to recreate the blueprints of an already constructed narrative, but rather in order to understand the consequential and cause-and-effect logic of fictional plots as possibilities. Once again, I want to remind the reader that the views and advice embedded in this work don’t mean to act as a panacea, and certainly cannot be religiously applied to all types of fiction. Art is experimentation, and while craftsmanship is its basis, there’s one principle that I’d like to think most of us agree on: that art is not a dogma, and its rules (if we accept there are any) are there to be broken.

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6.7  Summary of Conclusions This chapter essentially demonstrated how an in-depth comprehension of the concept and function of the fictional character can be conveyed through the fictional world. Much as in Conceptualisation, Exposition relies on the understanding of the principles governing all gathered information and its proper conveyance of paper. Or else, if the author does have a technique, let such technique be almost invisible. Whether we agree that fiction can be viewed as a possible attribution of reality or merely a textual ensemble with specific philosophical or metaphysical conceptual extensions, coherence is the key to suspension of disbelief, even if the author offers her own cues to the reader for decoding. I will close this section by quoting Currie (2010): Narrative is suited to the representation of Character. It is able to represent richly individuated temporal and causal connections between motivation, decision, and circumstance in ways that other representational forms cannot match. It provides the space within which we can see a person’s Character gradually revealed, and perhaps gradually changing in response to events to the actions of others. (Currie, 2010, p. 190)

7 Afterword

During the early stages of my doctoral research, I used to think that literary theory and creative writing have less in common than I would come to realise after its submission. Arguably, reading about scholars who accused authors of exaggerating or exchanging clichés unquestionably didn’t inspire me to consider theory and criticism as vital tools for exploring creative processes and the construction of a narrative from scratch. What I saw were a lot of inferences based on a pile of blueprints, which, useful on their own as they may have been, couldn’t serve as a solid theory for the designing of the actual edifice. Five years down the line, having studied a plethora of texts from a number of disciplines, I came to appreciate literary criticism for the actual purpose it aims to serve, to judge the building from the inhabitant’s perspective, and not from that of the architect. You can argue that my statement is an oversimplification or that it describes only part of the truth. In any case, when I was awarded my doctorate, I knew that I had dedicated five years of my life not just studying but also contributing to literary theory and criticism. The creative writer synthesises ex novo; at the same time, analysis illuminates alternative creative paths. Never before have the two fields been so close. I certainly hope that this book will be another step towards bridging the gap between creation and scrutiny, between production and consumption. My second chapter introduced the concept of the fictional character based on a set of personhood conditions to sketch and shade a rough shape of the form it will take during storytelling. The importance of accepting the recipient as an active participator in fiction writing is evident in my third chapter, which underpinned the reader’s existence and also her universality. It warned the writer that she is to be acknowledged, but not to the extent of impairing her own creativity and judgement. Moreover, it cautioned against the demonisation of emotional response as ‘unsophisticated.’ By highlighting the anthropocentric interest in reading, it illustrated how fiction encompasses human nature in its entirety, as well as how emotions constitute a vital part of it. The fourth chapter scrutinised the notion of realistic attribution in the text. As writers, our perception of reality will determine the degree

156 Afterword to which we will choose to deviate from it. Realism should be viewed as the means to achieving coherence, a logical stream the reader can follow. The author is inspired by the world to construct hers anew, and it can be radically different from the real one, as stories across different genres demonstrate. The idea of consistency is contextually adjusted, not applied to the altar of realistic precision. Subsequently, believability emerges from congruence and complexity, as does the character herself. The novelist’s task is not to explain her definition of ‘reality’ but rather to depict it through her creative performance. In the fifth chapter, I illustrated the uniqueness of the authorial identity, along with her artistic right to self-definition. Having extricated herself from the narrative, the author remains a discreet presence, allowing the reader the prerogative to participate without manipulating her into traps of morality and propaganda. The relationship between author and character is multifarious. The author could be viewed to assume a role similar to that of an actress, a maternal figure and a deity at the same time. With her perception, practical research, imagination and craftsmanship at work, she applies her understanding of human nature to the moulds of her character material, albeit letting them shape themselves for consistency. That way, the narrative emerges as a natural consequence rather than an episodic sequence of forced authorial decisions. By establishing her intended mode of narration, the author also defines, to a degree, the reader’s alignment with the character. Finally, in the sixth chapter I examined the fictional character with respect to the narrative in its entirety. With a range of devices at her disposition, the author selectively conveys the information she wishes, painting a convincing portrait for the reader to follow. The relationship between character and narrative is a dynamic one, with constant shifts and interactions systemically reforming it, until the story reaches its conclusion and the character arc is completed As a project aspiring to fill a pedagogic gap, and at the same time serve as an interdisciplinary tool, this book inevitably has its many limitations. To begin with, each of my chapters can be thematically expanded to books in themselves, both pertaining to character construction, as well as other aspects of the creative writing act. Achieving consistency across genres, examining closely notions of perception and imagination and analysing what writing as a craft may entail are only a few examples. The substantiations and conclusions of my propositions could be expanded and analysed anew, enriching the theoretical framework for creative writing and literary criticism all the more. The systemic analysis of the interaction among narrative elements may constitute an entire field of study, Cognitive Narratology being just one of them (Varotsis, 2013), casting light upon different ways of story-telling, focussing on different elements or the narrative holistically.

Afterword  157 Another issue to be considered is the absence of an original work of creative writing which would serve to demonstrate how the products of my own approach are practically applicable. Word count restrictions did not allow me the prerogative. The use of post-event (Harper, 2010) examples aims to illustrate how my paradigm functions; I have not been speculating on authorial intentions, but testing my hypotheses against the texts. The contribution to such a framework is this book’s ultimate goal. My study does not aspire to serve as the only applicable tool in the creation of character. It is, however, a brick in the construction of a pedagogic foundation, providing an explanatory platform for the apprentice writer, a didactic direction for the academic and an explicatory device for the literary critic. Additionally, it offers an alternative route to character construction, founded on the practical application of substantial comprehension. The author need not design or organise or strategically prepare; she should understand. Ultimately, the purpose of this book is to provide a solid explanatory tool, guiding the creative writer to develop her own methods and techniques of character construction, rather than presenting her with yet more new ones. Understanding the nature and function of the character concept is foundational, and on such foundation an encompassing pedagogical approach on character creation should be built.

Appendix

“The Ice Storm” by Rick Moody Setting: New Canaan, a small suburban town in the outskirts of Connecticut Period: Thanksgiving, 1973 Narration style: The author uses interchanges between third limited and contemporary omniscient in order to blend the experiential perspectives of his four protagonists with the narration of events outside their scope and knowledge. Yet at the end of the novel Moody takes the reader by surprising declaring Paul Hood as the sole narrator in first person form. Plot précis As a ghastly ice storm rises, post-Thanksgiving, over the suburban town of New Canaan, the Hoods and the Williamses struggle to disentangle themselves from the asphyxiating web of family relations. ­B enjamin is trying to define the nature of his extramarital affair with Janey W ­ illiams; Elena is absorbed by the boundaries of her self-isolation, and her revulsion caused by her husband’s infidelity; Wendy is devoted to politics, television and various sorts of sexual experimentation, especially with the neighbours’ sons, Mikey and Sandy Williams. And Paul is lost in his world of comics, self-determination and drug intake. The novel follows each of the Hoods into their respective spatial and mental paths during the night following Thanksgiving, when a party, an ice storm and a burst of realisations leave their inerasable imprint on the rest of the characters’ lives.

“Disgrace” by J.M. Coetzee Setting: Cape Town and the Eastern Cape Period: Post-apartheid South Africa Narration style: Limited third person, touching in style on first person.

160  Appendix Plot précis Driven by the frailty of his passions, David Lurie, a middle-aged, divorced professor in Cape Technical University, is accused of raping his young student Melanie Isaacs. Refusing to demonstrate any sincere regret, Lurie is dismissed and dishonoured, and relocates to his daughter’s land in the Eastern Cape of post-Apartheid South Africa. Despite his apparent distaste for Lucy’s life plans, views and companions, Lurie settles in harmoniously and becomes part of the farm’s daily life. Yet a brutal attack on the land, in which he is violently assaulted and his daughter raped, will challenge everything he thought he knew, leaving him amidst the shambles of implications and realisations.

Fingersmith Author: Sarah Waters Publication Year: 2002 Publisher: Virago Press Setting: London and suburbs Period: Nineteenth Century England Narration style: The story is narrated by the two protagonists in first person multiple. Plot précis Raised in a family of thieves, Sue Trinder is persuaded to assume the fake identity of Susan Smith and serve as young aristocrat Maud Lilly’s maid in order to convince her into marriage with Richard Rivers, who plans to abandon her in a mental institution and share her inherited fortune. During the time she spends at the Briar, Sue falls for Maud and is overcome by guilt. Yet as she will soon discover, she was not a partner but a victim of Rivers’ plans. Sue will soon find herself locked inside the sanatorium intended for Maud, desperate to escape and avenge. Brought in the Briar against her will, Maud Lilly is abusively trained by her uncle to become a secretary for his collection of pornographic books. One day, Richard Rivers arrives at the mansion and promises her freedom in return for her allegiance to a scheme and half her fortune. Desperate to escape her uncle’s tyranny, Maud agrees.

The Glorious Heresies Author: Lisa McInerney Publication Year: 2015 Publisher: John Murray Setting: Cork, Ireland Period: Present Narration style: Multiple third limited and first person.

Appendix  161 Plot précis Cork, Ireland, present day. Fifteen-year-old drug dealer Ryan Cusack is ready to salute his manhood by inviting Karine D’Arcy to his motherless house. Maureen Phelan has just used a Holy Stone to kill a man who has broken into her new residence – the ex-brothel of gangster Jimmy Phelan. Jimmy then hires Tony Cusack, Ryan’s abusive father, to clean up the mess. All the while, Georgie Fitzsimmons is looking for her partner, Robbie O’ Donovan, unaware that he’s lying dead on the floor of the brothel she used to work for, which now serves as a home to her pimp’s mother. As Ryan finds himself entangled in an on-off passionate relationship with Karine, Maureen makes Jimmy’s life as difficult as she can, while Georgie is trying to get back on the right path yet continuously swerving. The novel follows the lives of five social outcasts in modern Cork as they struggle against each other, against life and against themselves.

The Course of Love Author: Alain de Botton Publication Year: 2017 Publisher: Penguin Setting: CITY, Scotland. Period: Present Narration style: Contemporary omniscient. Plot précis The novel follows the common life of Rabih and Kirsty, from their first awkward flirting interactions to their older years. Two people, each with their past, individual tastes, needs, personal anxieties and fears meet and form a relationship, marry and have children, fight and reconcile, worry about their careers, have their marriage tested and become infinitely bonded in the course of love.

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Index

absorption of artifice 100, 109, 138 action 37, 38, 44, 64, 70, 73, 82, 90, 92, 118, 119, 122, 126, 127, 133, 134 aesthetic 41, 47, 48, 50, 51, 55, 56, 82, 87, 107, 118 agent 35, 69, 70, 73, 74, 126, 127, 152 alignment 49, 52, 53, 55, 56, 108, 122–4, 131, 156 Allan, D. 61 allegiance 52, 58, 123, 124, 131, 160 Allott, M. 88, 92, 100, 153 Allport, G. 26, 31, 34 antagonist 54, 129–31 anthropocentric 49, 83, 88, 96, 110, 125, 155 anti-hero 129, 131 antipathy 52, 53 apprehension via the senses 61, 91, 94 archetype 130 Aristotle 61, 63, 64, 68, 69, 73 attitude 28, 51, 55, 69, 83, 109, 129, 137 Atwood, M. 40, 44, 80, 82, 106, 112 author 23, 25, 27, 34, 36, 39–45, 47, 48, 51, 58, 60, 62, 64–70, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78–86, 88–96, 99–107, 109–14, 116, 118–20, 122, 123, 128, 129, 133, 134, 142, 149, 154, 156, 157, 159–61 authorial 37, 42, 78, 79, 82, 85, 86, 88, 90, 94, 102, 103, 109, 113, 118, 125, 129, 139, 156, 157 autobiographical 114 autonomy 64, 75, 99, 100, 102, 149 Barnes, J. 122, 123 Barthes, R. 49, 78, 79 behaviour 28, 36, 37, 39, 47, 70, 73, 101, 105

Bonnefoy, Y. 40 Bordwell, D. 106 Botton, Alain de 27, 72, 109, 113, 131, 135, 137, 138, 141, 161 Boulter, A. 59, 63, 88, 90, 92, 95, 108, 142, 143, 150 Bower, G. H. 36, 47 Brayfield, C. 85, 101, 104 Bronte, E. 133 Burgess, A. 84, 133 Burke, K. 121 Burns, C. 97 Burr, V. 28, 30, 34, 150, 151 Calvino, I. 40, 122 canon formation 108 Casterton, J. 85 catharsis 71, 131, 139, 153 causality 36, 64, 126, 127 character construction 39, 75, 97, 156, 157 character expositors 108, 142, 148 characterisation 25, 48, 74, 126, 127, 134, 142, 149–51 character markers 144, 145 character schema 7, 12 Chartier, R. 41 Chatman, S. 42, 45, 75, 105–7, 126, 129 Childs, P. 28, 30, 35 Coetzee, J. M. 27, 28, 30, 31, 35, 41, 44, 54, 55, 71, 76, 84, 120, 121, 131, 132, 138–40, 143, 144, 159 cognition 37, 38, 40, 47, 48, 50, 52, 55, 57, 58, 68, 81, 84, 87, 91, 93, 95, 96, 98, 99, 108, 123, 153, 156 cognitive see cognition Cohan, S. 41 Coleridge, S. T. 66, 67 communication 32, 42, 46, 48, 81, 85, 106, 142, 143, 147, 149

172 Index complexity 38, 41, 53, 55, 74–6, 83, 108, 115, 122, 124, 125, 130, 151, 156 Compton-Burnett, I. 25 conceptual ecology see ecology Conceptualisation 103, 125, 154 conditions of personhood 35 conflict 34, 37, 38, 115, 129–31, 136, 150, 153 consistency 26, 37–9, 43, 44, 47–9, 65–9, 73, 77, 87, 94, 97, 101–3, 109, 113, 115, 122, 123, 128, 140, 154, 156 construction 24, 26, 39, 40, 48, 60, 74, 75, 96, 97, 104, 127, 136, 155–7 contemporary 42, 44, 54, 62, 63, 75, 82, 109, 112, 113, 125, 130, 159, 161 convincing 26, 47, 48, 70, 71, 102, 107, 111, 143, 151, 156 copycat 66 Craik, J. 24, 25 Crane, D. 24 creator 42, 80, 104, 110 criticism 87, 155, 156 Culler, J. 49, 164 culture 24, 28, 29, 32, 40, 45, 76, 79, 81, 82, 116, 132, 150 Cumberland, R. 73, 83 Cunningham, M. 98 Currie, G. 63, 67, 68, 106, 152, 154 Daiches, D. 103, 109, 113, 136, 139 deautomatization of perception 85, 172 deconstruction 106, 164 defamiliarisation 65, 118 De Maupassant, G. 92 Dennett, D. 36 depiction 37, 48, 63, 68, 69, 84, 102 dialect 143 dialogue 30, 31, 87, 99, 102, 119, 134, 142–6, 149 didacticism 50, 61, 70, 80, 81, 83, 85, 125, 157 diegetic 106 direct dramatisation 119 discourse 81, 119, 142 Djikic, M. 57 Dostoyevsky, F. 84 dramatic irony 115, 119 Dybek, S. 88 dystopian 44

Eagleton, T. 78 ecology 90 Edelstein, E. 14 editorial omniscience 109 Egri, L. 26, 37, 45, 84, 87, 126, 129 Einfuhlung 52 Eliot, G. 82 Elster, J. 38 embodiment 104, 128 emotion 45, 51–3, 55, 56, 58, 90, 91, 138 empathy 50–4, 57, 91, 99, 104 empirical 45, 48, 50, 54, 58, 65, 105, 113 emplotment 64 existential 26, 27, 55, 90, 131 experimentation 117, 122, 131, 148, 153, 159 exposition 25, 38, 95, 103, 113, 121, 125–9, 142, 149, 154 external stimuli 36, 126, 133, 136, 152, 153 extradiegetic 106 extras 129, 133, 135 Eysenck, H. J. 34, 35 fanciful 93–5, 97, 99, 104 fantasy 28, 57, 60, 69, 85, 93, 94, 98 Ferrara, F. 164 ficelle 133 fiction 36, 39, 40, 46–9, 56–69, 77, 78, 81, 83–5, 88, 91, 92, 94–6, 98, 104, 106, 107, 109, 118, 125, 130, 131, 133, 135, 138, 143, 152–5 fictional character 36, 39, 41, 47–51, 55–8, 60, 62, 70, 75, 76, 96–100, 105, 113, 121, 122, 125, 126, 128, 136, 142, 152, 154–6 Fielding, H. 73 fingere 66 first-person 117, 119 Flaubert, G. 92, 118 focalisation 107 Forster, E. M. 62, 70, 72, 75, 88, 90, 96, 102–4, 107, 126, 127 Foucault, M. 78–80 Friedman, N. 108–10, 112, 114, 118, 119, 122 function 34, 49, 50, 58, 61, 63, 64, 74, 75, 77–9, 91, 107, 113, 117, 125, 128–30, 133, 135, 151, 154, 157 futuristic 62, 66

Index  173 Galef, D. 129, 133–5 Gardner, J. 59, 65, 69, 70, 102, 108, 116, 117 Garvey, J. 127, 128 genre 63, 128 Gilhooly, K. J. 2 Graham, L. V. 32, 79, 139 Gregg, L. W. 2 Gudjonsson, G. H. 34, 35 Guildford, J. P. 86 Gumperz, J. J. 143, 145 Hahn, M. 86, 91 Harding, D. W. 48, 49, 51, 52 Harper, G. 50, 80, 81, 86, 157 Harvey, W. J. 64, 75, 76, 87, 104, 112, 121, 123, 127, 133, 138, 149 Hawthorne, N. 83 head-hopping 122 heterodiegetic 106 Hewson, M. 89, 90 histor 105 historian 60–3 Hogan, P. C. 41, 44, 45, 51 homodiegetic 106 Horace 58, 85 Hugo, V. 61, 71, 84, 98, 108 hypodiegetic 106 identification 51–5, 57, 81, 124, 127 identity 24, 25, 28–30, 34, 35, 38, 39, 43, 46, 51, 64, 77, 78, 80, 81, 97, 103, 106, 119, 125, 126, 128, 136, 139, 141, 142, 146, 156, 160 idiosyncrasy 26, 40, 117, 142 illusion of free will 100 imaginal 99, 111 imaginary 45, 46, 54, 57, 60, 62, 89, 90, 98, 99, 115, 128 imagination 41, 50, 54, 62, 64, 67, 87–91, 93–7, 100–2, 104, 125, 129, 131, 156 imitatio historiae 62 imitation 51, 60, 63–5, 68, 69 in absentia 104 inconsistency 69, 73, 103 Indick, W. 14 indirect discourse see discourse individuality 75, 79, 92, 139 intellectual ecology see ecology intentions 36, 38, 41, 42, 54, 57, 64, 77–80, 82, 84, 105, 108, 111, 115, 123, 125, 157

interaction 29, 38, 47, 59, 64, 90, 98, 100, 126, 151, 152, 156 interpretation 41, 42, 47, 64, 78, 80, 88, 98, 110, 113, 114 invenire 66 Iser, W. 40–5, 48, 49, 51, 62 James, H. 49, 83, 91, 128 Johnson, M. 88–90, 93 Kearney, R. 66 Keen, S. 50, 52, 53, 91, 99, 117 Kellogg, R. 87, 105, 107, 114, 117, 124, 125 Knights, L. C. 66, 70 Kochman, T. 24, 29, 150 Kundera, M. 25, 27, 114, 121, 130 Kupperman, J. 36, 38, 140, 141 Lebowitz, M. 68, 74 Leitch, V. B. 40 Lewis, D. 66, 67 lifelike 26, 64, 69, 104, 134 literary criticism 155, 156 literary theory 46, 51, 78, 79, 105, 155 literature 32, 45, 49, 57, 59–61, 66, 67, 78, 83, 87, 108, 109, 113, 124, 131, 137 Lodge, D. 36, 44, 118 Lothe, J. 127, 136, 152 Lubbock, P. 107, 119 make-believe 67, 69, 111 Margolin, U. 36, 74, 122, 141, 150 Matravers, D. 66, 67, 69 McCall, C. 7 McCann, G. 78, 79 McCarthy, C. 119 McInerney, L. 34, 72, 137, 121, 145, 160, 167, 174 meaning 40, 42, 43, 47, 59, 62–4, 66, 80, 145, 151 memoir 98, 122 memorable 39, 135 memory 50, 65, 86, 91–3, 95, 138 meta-message 145 metamorphosis 34, 139, 140 Mills, P. 59, 85, 89, 129 mimesis 64–6 mimetic 48–50, 117 mind-reading 46–8 minor character 34, 129, 133, 134

174 Index Mole, C. 67, 69 monologue 142, 145 Moody, R. 23, 26, 27, 29, 32, 36, 53, 54, 71, 72, 74, 76, 84, 110–13, 134, 135, 146–8, 150, 152, 159 Moore, S. 87, 91, 97, 98, 101, 104 moral 32, 35, 40, 43, 47, 52, 59, 78, 81–5, 97, 123, 125, 130, 131 morality 29, 36, 84, 147, 156 Morrissette, B. 109, 118 motivations 26, 27, 36, 38, 42, 45, 54, 70, 73, 75, 78, 82, 83, 85, 104, 111, 112, 114, 115, 117, 123, 151 Mudrick, M. 138 Mullan, J. 108, 117, 125, 131, 143, 147 multiple narration see third person multiple third 121, 160 multiple viewpoints 121 mythos 64 Nabokov, V. 123, 124, 133 Nagel, J. 29, 30, 32, 33 narration 67, 71, 72, 85, 105–8, 111, 113, 114, 116–19, 121, 122, 124, 125, 130, 131, 147, 156, 159–61 narrative 26, 36–8, 40–3, 45, 49–52, 54–9, 61–70, 73–5, 77, 79–81, 83, 84, 90–2, 94–6, 100, 101, 103–7, 109–12, 114, 115, 117, 118, 121–30, 133, 134, 136, 140, 149, 152–6 narratology 153, 156 narrator 42, 48, 62, 67, 105–9, 111–15, 117–19, 121, 123–5, 159 non-fiction 57, 95 novel 34, 35, 41, 44, 47, 51, 59, 60, 62, 69, 73, 75, 76, 81, 83–5, 90, 91, 98, 103, 106, 113, 118, 120, 121, 123, 125, 127–30, 132, 134, 135, 138, 142, 150–53, 159, 161 novelist 39, 40, 46, 59–63, 65–8, 70, 71, 73, 74, 77, 78, 80, 82, 87, 92, 96–100, 102–4, 106, 110, 112, 119, 121, 122, 125 Novitz, D. 93 Oatley, K. 41, 48, 50, 54–6, 63, 65, 91, 105 O’Connor, F. 84, 85, 88, 91, 93, 94, 97 O’Farrell, M. 121, 122

omniscient 89, 107–9, 111–13, 116, 118, 121, 159, 161 Orwell, G. 44, 119, 168, 174 Ouellet, P. 63, 64 plot climax 111 rasa 51 reader 25, 27, 34, 36, 38–46, 48, 49, 51–75, 77, 79, 80, 82–6, 89, 90, 94, 95, 102–14, 116, 118, 119, 122–5, 128, 131, 134, 135, 144, 147–9, 153, 154, 156, 159 reader-response 40, 50, 52 reading 42, 43, 45–52, 56–8, 67, 88, 95, 120, 128, 146, 155 realism 34, 59, 60, 72, 77, 95, 110, 117, 125, 127, 144, 156 reality 30, 39, 44–7, 49, 57, 59, 60, 62–9, 75, 77, 80, 81, 83, 84, 91–4, 98, 99, 115, 116, 121, 123–5, 128, 131, 135, 143, 147, 150, 153–6, 163 recognition 52, 60, 68, 122, 124 recreation 58, 63, 65, 66, 136 reference 28, 53, 59, 60, 63, 64, 66, 67, 115 relations 26, 34, 37, 75, 81, 84, 89, 109, 112, 113, 115, 126, 142, 147, 149–53, 159 reliable 105, 108, 122–4 representation 25, 29, 35, 48, 59, 63, 65, 93, 142, 154 research 42, 56, 59, 62, 69, 86, 90, 94, 95, 125, 134, 155, 156 response 40–3, 47–51, 53–6, 87, 154, 155 Ricoeur, P. 63, 64 Rimmon-Kenan, S. 49, 59, 106, 107, 123, 124, 142, 146, 150 Rubenfeld, J. 98 Salinger, J. D. 123, 133, 169, 175 Scholes, R. 87, 105, 107, 114, 117, 124, 125 Schwarz, D. R. 42, 44, 47–9, 128, 137 Scott, W. 100 Seger, L. 26, 38, 88, 90, 94, 103, 129, 133, 135, 145, 150 selfhood 99, 142 Shklovsky, V. 65, 85, 118 simulation 50, 63 Sparshott, F. E. 61, 63, 65, 68

Index  175 Stahl, A. 49 Stanislavski, C. 87, 97, 98, 101 Stein, S. 25, 28, 130, 134, 143–5, 149 Steinberg, E. R. 165 stereotype 25, 34, 74–7 storyteller 81, 106, 107 super-reader 40 supporting characters 135 suspension of disbelief 38, 41, 66–9, 94, 103, 107, 111, 122, 154 Syed, M. 86 symbolic 59, 99, 101, 102, 104 sympathy 53, 58, 69, 117 synergy 104, 126, 142 synthesis 64 systemic 127, 156 Tannen, D. 29, 30, 32, 34, 145, 150 Taylor, M. 34–6, 98, 100 technique 25, 40, 70, 86, 87, 112, 127, 143, 154 Thackeray, W. 83 thematic 49, 50, 53, 71, 94, 102, 111, 133, 135 theme 55, 81, 141 theory 40, 46, 47, 50, 51, 56, 60, 64, 68, 78, 87, 93, 99, 105, 153, 155 third limited 159, 160 see also third person third person 118–22, 130, 159, 160 Tilford, J. 108, 114, 115, 118 Todorov, T. 49, 130

Tolstoy, L. 108 traits 49, 52, 53, 57, 73, 74, 76, 77, 86, 127 Twain, M. 60 universal reader 43, 45 unreliable 105, 122–5 Varotsis, G. 15, 37, 126, 127, 131, 142, 152, 156 Vermeule, B. 41, 46, 55, 97 viewpoint 104, 108, 114, 121–3 villain 130 virtual 36, 40, 48, 53, 65, 106, 152 Walton, K. L. 60, 63, 67, 69 Waters, S. 24, 25, 27, 29, 33, 35, 54, 84, 114–17, 123, 141, 142, 160 Watkins, M. 93, 98–100, 102, 110, 111, 114, 118, 122 Williams, B. 29, 149 Williams, R. 81, 82 Williams, T. 14, 41, 97 Winterson, J. 98 writer 40, 42, 46, 65, 70, 78–80, 85, 89, 91, 95, 101, 103–7, 116, 141, 143, 153, 155, 157 writing 25, 40, 42, 45, 46, 50, 56, 59, 65, 77, 79, 81, 85–8, 92, 98, 100, 116, 122, 125, 149, 155–7 Zola, E. 63, 153 Zunshine, L. 46–8